Judith Miller, a 71-year-old author, and antique expert who appeared on BBC One’s Antiques Roadshow have passed away. According to her publisher, Mitchell Beazley, she perished “over the weekend after a brief illness.”
In 2007, Miller, author of more than 100 books on antiques and interior design, joined the BBC program.
In 1979, she co-founded the international best-selling Miller’s Antiques Price Guide and was a frequent lecturer and broadcaster.
Miller was working on the current version of the antiques guide at the time of her death.
In 2009, she identified a set of Art Deco posters designed by the French artist Jean Dupas that had been discovered in Stanway House, Gloucestershire. This was one of her most notable discoveries on the Antiques Roadshow.
Miller acknowledged that she was a member of the “Formica generation” and stated that she did not begin accumulating antiques until the 1960s when she was a student at Edinburgh University.
She began researching the inexpensive plates she purchased from city thrift stores by consulting books, auction catalogs, and local antique festivals.
Alison Starling, from the Octopus publishing group, which owns Mitchell Beazley, stated,
“I’ve had the privilege of working with Judith intermittently over the past three decades, and the news of her passing is a tremendous blow.”
She always combined her astonishingly extensive, in-depth knowledge of antiques with a lifelong passion for making the world of collecting accessible and unintimidating to everyone.
She added that Miller would be “greatly missed” and that she had forged numerous friendships with staff at Octopus “through diverse topics of conversation, including work, family, dogs, Scottish rugby, and her other passion, Bruce Springsteen.”
The antique expert, who co-founded the Miller’s Antiques Price Guide with her first spouse Martin Miller, is survived by her second husband John Wainwright, three children, and four grandchildren.
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