Latest news with #Antiques
Daily Record
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Record
Bargain Hunt star Anita Manning's children as she opens up on mother-daughter business
Anita Manning has become a regular face on TV, but what is known of the Bargain Hunt star's family life away from the show? Anita Manning, a renowned antiques expert hailing from Scotland, is a familiar face on BBC One's Bargain Hunt. The 77 year old Glaswegian holds the distinction of being Scotland's first female auctioneer. The presenter, who has also made appearances on Flog It! and Antiques Road Trip, was introduced to auctions by her father during her childhood. She ventured into the antiques business in the 1970s, although she initially had different career aspirations. She pursued dance studies and subsequently became a teacher before tying the knot and starting a family. The expert is a mother to two children, her daughter Lala and son Luke. Upon becoming a mother, she expanded her knowledge of antiques by buying furniture at auctions. She then embarked on travels across the country, buying and selling furniture. Anita and her daughter Lala jointly manage the Glasgow-based auction house Great Western Auctions, a partnership that has been ongoing since 1989. Her son resides in Hong Kong, and the star is accustomed to her family living in various parts of the globe. Her own mother spent the final 35 years of her life in Australia. Over the years, she has gleaned much from her family and even set a record for the highest profit earned on a single auction item. In a remarkable turn of events on 'Antiques Road Trip' in 2016, she snagged a Buddha statue for a mere £50 and later sold it for a staggering £3,800. Her astonishing find however was topped by her co-star Paul Laidlaw just the following year. Intriguingly, when recounting how she decided on her career path, she mentioned: "Although I have always been interested in Antiques, and loved their sense of history, their beauty, craftsmanship and design, I did not start my working life aiming to be an auctioneer or be involved in the Antiques trade (in fact sometimes I still wonder what I'm going to be when I grow up)." She went on to explain: "But fate put the opportunity in my path and being an adventurous sort of gal I changed direction and set up Great Western Auctions with my daughter Lala in Glasgow in 1989, becoming one of Scotland's first woman auctioneers." She also expressed her gratitude for her profession stating: "I am so glad I did because I have the best job in the world and it has been a continual joy to handle wonderful objects on a daily basis and investigate their place in history." This expert has developed a special fondness for paintings, with a particular interest in works of Scottish origin. Anita, alongside her daughter Lala, inaugurated Great Western Auctions Ltd in Glasgow. They began their journey with a modest setup situated in the bustling West End of Glasgow, with an intimate team comprising themselves and one other staff member. Since then, the mother-daughter team has relocated twice to cater for their expanding enterprise. They now employ roughly 14 staff members, all of whom are specialists and auction administrators. Bargain Hunt is broadcast on weekdays on BBC One at 12.15pm.
Bangkok Post
04-07-2025
- Business
- Bangkok Post
Protecting culture is key
The latest cabinet shakeup has shifted the spotlight onto the Ministry of Culture. Officials of this usually quiet ministry received their new, high-profile minister yesterday, who was only days before suspended as prime minister. Paetongtarn Shinawatra swiftly moved her office from Government House to the Ministry of Culture yesterday, creating a buzz among officials and the public alike. PM Paetongtarn is the second prime minister in Thai history to concurrently take up the post of culture minister. The first was Field Marshal Plaek Pibulsongkram in 1952. Field Marshal Plaek -- known for his media savviness, used elements of Thai culture, such as patriotic literature, food and even dress codes to propel his ultra-nationalistic propaganda campaign. In modern times, this portfolio is regarded as Grade C in Thai politics -- the seat is either given to political rookies or to return favours to loyal politicians. The ministry receives around 7 billion baht annually, among the five ministries that have the lowest budget allocation. Unlike agriculture, education or even the labour ministries, the Minister of Culture does not have the opportunity to engage or give favours to local voters. It must be said that the Pheu Thai Party has paid a lot of attention to cultural management. The party has created culturally inclined policies such as the creative economy and soft power. During his first term, her father and then-prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra created special bodies such as the Office of Knowledge Management and Development (OKMD) and new cultural museums to cater to modern culture, such as Museum Siam. With Ms Paetongtarn at its helm, it is certain that this ministry will get more financial and policy support. Indeed, the embattled PM made a good impression on her first day. Appearing energetic and fresh, Ms Paetongtarn said she had enough energy to serve the Ministry of Culture. She told officials that her goal is to "commercialise" Thai culture -- areas such as food, boxing, and even promoting film production, which aligns with the Pheu Thai Party's flagship "soft power" policy. Yet the task of the Culture Ministry is more than just peddling soft power. The Ministry of Culture has a lot of challenges and problems that have been left unresolved. The most glaring problem is the faltering conservation of Thailand's heritage buildings. Thailand has sold its cultural heritage for tourism. Yet, we have seen valuable architectural heritage buildings left in disrepair or simply knocked down, such as the Sala Chalermthai Theatre and, recently, the Scala Theatre. Both architectural gems were demolished simply because they were not listed under the Ancient Monuments, Antiques, Objects of Art and National Museums Act 1961. The new minister must improve such laws to protect such architectural gems. Even some national heritage buildings are affected by development projects. One glaring example was the attempt to explore petrochemical resources near the highly valuable Si Thep Historical Park in 2018. Without strong local opposition, oil exploration would have continued near the heritage site, and Si Thep would not have been listed as a Unesco World Heritage Site in 2023. PM Paetongtarn should use her power and experience to make development policies to support soft power and cultural heritage protection. Politicians who sit at the Ministry of Culture must pay more attention towards protecting and preserving existing cultural heritage sites. Without this, Thailand will not have much soft power to sell.
ABC News
22-06-2025
- Entertainment
- ABC News
Antiques Roadshow: S46 Episode 1 Coronation Special
Antiques Roadshow NEW SEASON Lifestyle Feel-Good Inspiring Watch Article share options Share this on Facebook Twitter Send this by Email Copy link WhatsApp Messenger Fiona Bruce and the Roadshow team visit more of Britain's most sumptuous and unusual locations, inviting the public to bring their antiques for examination and share stories of how they came to own them.
Boston Globe
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Elizabeth Pochoda, journalist who traversed the media world, dies at 83
And she worked at publications with starkly different readerships, including the progressive magazine The Nation -- from which she decamped for awhile to co-found the august literary magazine Grand Street -- Entertainment Weekly, The New York Post, and The Daily News. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Not that Dr. Pochoda had any patience with readership distinctions. 'I don't believe in different brows -- high, low, middle,' she told Chicago Reader in 1993. 'I believe if you write about things with the proper excitement, they're accessible to everybody.' Advertisement 'Betsy just had an amazingly broad vision, whether it was in the antiques world, the political world, or the arts world,' said Eleanor Gustafson, a consulting editor at Antiques, who was the magazine's executive editor during Dr. Pochoda's tenure as editor-in-chief from 2009 to 2016. To transform Antiques into something less, well, antique and more appealing to a wider audience, Dr. Pochoda asked Ted Muehling, a designer of jewelry and decorative objects, to go to the Shelburne Museum in Vermont, choose an object that resonated with him in its vast collection of Americana, and write about it. Toots Zynsky, a glass artist, undertook a similar mission at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, which has a focus on Asian, Native American, and folk art. Advertisement 'She was a brilliant editor and enormously creative,' said Dominique Browning, who brought Dr. Pochoda along when she moved from the top of the masthead at Mirabella to the top slot at House & Garden in the mid-1990s. Dr. Pochoda, who had 'a very quirky sensibility,' Browning said, commissioned Irish novelist Edna O'Brien to write about her fax machine, food expert Michael Pollan to write about picture windows, and novelist and essayist Cynthia Ozick to write about ladles. She also supported writers in the ways that perhaps mattered to them most: financially and typographically. 'She called me cold and told me she had wanted me to write for The Nation, but was embarrassed because the fees there were so low,' jazz critic and writer Gary Giddins said in an interview. But once she was at Vanity Fair, he added, 'she wanted to give me a contract.' Katrine Ames, a writer and editor who was on the House & Garden staff with Dr. Pochoda and who later wrote for her at Antiques, recalled an assignment to profile Ulysses Grant Dietz, then the chief curator at the Newark Museum. 'I told Betsy it was way over the length she'd asked for, but there was such great information, and I told her I would trim it,' Ames said in an interview. 'And she said: 'No, I'm not going to cut a word. I'm just going to put it in smaller print.'' Advertisement The youngest of three children, Elizabeth Jane Turner was born Dec. 13, 1941, in Chicago. Her father, Frederick, was a lawyer; her mother, Frances (Franklin) Turner, managed the household. After earning a bachelor of arts in English literature at Connecticut College, she earned a doctorate in medieval literature from the University of Pennsylvania in 1968. That same year, she married Philip Pochoda, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, who later became an editor and book publisher. Elizabeth Pochoda was a professor of English literature at Temple University when, in 1976, she was offered the job of literary editor for The Nation on the strength of a recommendation from Philip Roth. 'I'd written a review of his comic fantasy 'The Breast,' and we met for drinks in Philadelphia after his class at the University of Pennsylvania,' Dr. Pochoda recalled in a tribute to Roth in The Nation after his death in 2018. 'I was a fledgling academic, and I told him that I wanted out, that tenure was the worst thing that could befall me.' 'Betsy found journalism exciting,' Philip Pochoda said. 'We were both active in the antiwar movement, and Betsy was very outfacing about her beliefs and her cultural politics. The Nation was a much better fit than a life of academia.' 'She wanted to take on the big books, the books on the best-seller lists,' said Katrina vanden Heuvel, then the editor of the magazine and now its editorial director and publisher. 'She was not earnest. Betsy hated earnest. But she was tough. She was steel.' Advertisement Dr. Pochoda was as sharp and witty a writer as many of those she edited. 'Here is a curious moment in the annals of American literary fetishism,' she wrote in a 2019 column for The Nation about the auction of Roth's personal effects, taking due note of the mild interest in 'the master's Sandy Koufax baseball card and a badly chipped Pat and Dick Nixon souvenir plate.' They were, she observed, 'the leavings of a man well known for taking to heart Flaubert's advice that writers should live modestly if they want to be wild and original in their work.' Dr. Pochoda's marriage ended in divorce. In addition to her daughter, Ivy, she leaves a granddaughter and a brother, Frederick W. Turner. 'My tremendous mother passed this morning after a brief battle with A.L.S.,' Ivy Pochoda wrote in an Instagram post last Thursday. 'Because she's not around to edit this post, it's going to be filled with platitudes. She would probably ask me to revise and resubmit.' This article originally appeared in
Daily Mirror
25-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
BBC Antiques Roadshow guest politely nods as 'beautiful' inherited bird cage worth fortune
aN Antiques Roadshow expert was thrilled when a guest showed him a stunning bird cage that she had inherited from her husband's family - and, unbeknown to her, it was worth thousands. WARNING: This article contains spoilers from Antiques Roadshow. An Antiques Roadshow guest could only whisper "gosh" as they discovered the eye-watering worth of a birdcage passed down through the family. BBC's Antiques aficionado Lennox Cato was part of the expert crew descending upon Helmingham Hall, where a woman brought in a rather extraordinary birdcage. Cato couldn't help but express his amazement: "So we have this wonderful, almost exotic looking bird cage." Curious about its history, he probed the guest who shared: "Well it was inherited by my husband from his family who lived in Suffolk but I'm afraid he doesn't know anymore than that. "He doesn't know where they got it from, I'm sure they inherited it but I don't know who from." Cato, suspecting the cage to be a British creation dating back to 1790-1800, enthused: "The colours, well, they're just amazing. I love the idea, looking from the top and working down. "Even the little finials carved here and these baubles hanging are bone to signify it's a bird cage. "And then we have this tiny bird set within this delightful oval. The bars themselves are brass but have been treated to appear black," he explained. He even noted a coat of arms gracing the front, but the owner admitted: "I'm afraid we've never looked into who that is." Delving deeper into the piece's features, Cato showcased how it operated, pointing out an endearing "dove of peace" figure used to secure the miniature doors. He detailed further: "And then we have the little feeding drawers left and right and on the lower section, you can turn these round and we have a little tray for cleaning. "This is what we call parquetry work, little pieces of wood, nicely simulated, to form patterns. "Let me just spin it around to show everyone just how nice it is." Cato went on to explain that the antique was crafted from a blend of maple, padauk, and ebony before moving towards his conclusion. He expressed: "All the years I've been dealing, I've seen a number of bird cages but I've never seen a bird cage as interesting and as beautiful as this. "This to me, wow, it breaks all the rules. And I think if you saw this for sale, it could quite easily cost you £15,000." Despite the astonishing valuation, the guest appeared to react with muted surprise, barely whispering "gosh", before Cato happily concluded: "It's a jolly good thing."
