Samovar.
SAMOVAR My left-over samovar thinks it is an heirloom, connoisseur of dust, and chaperon of 1901. Silvoed with a velvety cloth to a grey plague gleam its empty belly smells of several nowheres. This mottled shape of Britannia metal has staked me out with its balding silver spout and...

Roll up, roll up, for the greatest art museum on earth: the Ringling Museum, Sarasota, built in 1925-30 by the circus impresario John Ringling, has just completed a major restoration and expansion. Its 66 acres are home not only to outstanding Old Master paintings but also to a 1920s palazzo and the largest model circus in the world. Susan Moore reports on this inspired revival.
Not so long ago the Ringling Museum was Florida's best-kept secret. This gem of a collection--housed in a 1920s pink stucco Italianate gallery set in formal gardens (Fig. 2)--and the Ca d'Zan, a palazzo in Venetian gothic style overlooking Sarasota Bay, are the unlikely and fantastical fruits of the...

Caesar Blackwell (1769-1845): the work and times of central Alabama's nineteenth-century slave-evangelist.
Caesar Blackwell lived as a slave and died as a slave. No one, however, was as influential within the slave population in central Alabama as Caesar. Although he lived and died in slavery, his ownership changed from John B. Blackwell to the Alabama Baptist Association (ABA). Caesar's...

Ready-to-eat meals at rocking prices.
NEW DELHI: Your ready-to-eat meals will get cheaper by Rs 1-5 , following finance minister P Chidambaram's waiving off excise duty for ready-to-eat meals and instant food mixes in the Budget 2007-08 . However, biscuit makers are waiting for Parle, the market leader in glucose biscuits category - the...

Company Watch - Hilton Hotels.
Oct 1, 2007 The third quarter started with so much promise for corporate dealmakers round the world. Within the space of an hour on the afternoon of July 3, Blackstone, the US private equity group run by Steve Schwarzman, had clinched the latest huge buy-out by agreeing...

'Title of Jinnah House is still with Dina'.
Byline: Swati Deshpande MUMBAI: After withdrawing her earlier petition, Mohammed Ali Jinnah's daughter Dina Wadia - a British national - tried to reclaim Jinnah House by lobbying the government and sending numerous missives to successive PMs, including one this year to Manmohan Singh. She expressed surprise that...

From the director of the Watts Gallery.
The last thing any of us at the Watts Gallery wants is to deaccession any part of the collection (Editorial, APOLLO, September 2007). However, our grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund is contingent on our ability to raise an endowment for the gallery and so ensure the long-term future...

Father can exclude son from will: SC.
Byline: Dhananjay Mahapatra NEW DELHI: Callous offspring who do not care for aging or ill parents but still expect to be given a share of their parents' property had better pay heed. The Supreme Court found nothing suspicious in a father cutting out of his will a...

Treasuring Herblock: the Library of Congress is preserving the drawings of the beloved Washington Post editorial cartoonist.
Deep inside the James Madison Memorial Building at the Library of Congress, in a room restricted to public access, Sara Duke, Holly Krueger and Valeria Orlandini are meticulously preserving newspaper history. The trio is pushing forward with a five-year-old project to conserve more than 60,000 drawings by...

Unclaimed Money: Banks may end up with Rs 1,000 cr booty.
Byline: Gayatri Nayak MUMBAI: Over Rs 1,000 cr is lying unclaimed with banks in India in 1.03 cr inactive accounts. Banks term money lying in accounts that have been inactive for over 10 years as unclaimed deposits. According to the latest figures released by the...