Rosalind Pulver obituary
Rosalind Pulver, who has died aged 91, was gregarious, sociable and a natural born organiser. I remember her shaking up my school's parents' association in the 1970s, her greatest triumph being getting the pupils a tour of McDonald's HQ that included free burgers.
She was born and grew up in London, first in Paddington, in a flat above her father's menswear shop in Church Street market, and then in Hendon. As with many children of her generation, her life was interrupted by the second world war; her father, Louis, was called up to the Home Guard and posted to the south coast, changing the family name from Cohen to Collins at the same time. Rosalind went to a convent school in Golders Green called La Sagesse; it was the only place that would allow children to stay until early evening when her mother, Sarah, could pick her up after the shop closed.
After taking a typing course at Kilburn Polytechnic, now the College of North West London, she got her first job as a secretary at the BBC, working for the BBC Concert Orchestra at the Camden theatre, now the nightclub Koko, for conductors including Gilbert Vinter and Charles Mackerras. The BBC in those days was quite an upper crust place and Rosalind, never the most outdoorsy person, actually joined the BBC riding club, even though she was scared of horses.
But riding was not enough to keep her there. She joined Lew Grade's ATV, right at the birth of ITV, in the mid-1950s. While there she worked for Peter Cotes, also known as Sydney Boulting, older brother of the film-making Boulting twins, and then Stella Richman, a pioneering female TV executive appointed by Grade as ATV's script editor. Rosalind used to do a great imitation of Richman's mostly successful attempts to talk Grade into something over the phone: 'Oh, Lewwwwww …'
At a Christmas party in 1960 she met my father, Martin Pulver, and they married the following year. Rosalind gave up full-time work not long afterwards. Martin joined her family's shop, L Collins, and continued to work there until his retirement in the 1990s.
A new phase in my parents' life opened up when they started collecting ceramics in the late 1960s, primarily 19th-century British pottery and porcelain. They both thoroughly enjoyed their life in antiques; they made many friends and achieved a certain prominence. Martin became chairman of the Spode Society, while for many years Rosalind was the meetings secretary of the English Ceramic Circle, the premier body for ceramics study and research.
My father liked the buying and selling side of the antiques world, while Rosalind became an accomplished researcher, publishing articles of original research on neglected figures such as Samuel Morris and John Downes Rochfort.
In the 1990s she realised a long-held ambition and earned a degree in history of art from University College London.
After Martin's death in 2015, Rosalind moved to Hertfordshire to be close to my sister, Elizabeth, and lived there until the beginning of this year.
She is survived by Elizabeth and me, and by five grandchildren: Edward, Katie, Ellen, Lucy and Zoe.
