Polly Leonard is the founder of Selvedge, the world’s leading magazine about the culture of cloth. It’s a one-word cipher about textiles with a cultural edge, who makes them, and how. Polly talks to Judy about why she believes cloth is central to civilisation; she says “fibre may look like fluff, but it carries the weight of human history”. She shares the steps on her creative journey - starting with her art student days in Glasgow and New York - and her relentless pursuit of the highest standards. The pair also discuss the tension between making on one hand and disposable, fast fashion on the other, and why Polly believes art and craft should be a more valued part of the school curriculum.
And for those who don’t already know, Polly will reveal what the selvedge on a piece of fabric is!
Show Notes
// Hosted by Judy Stewart // Produced by Caroline Hughes for Feast Collective
// Sound Engineer: Jason Millhouse
// Instagram: @_unpaused // Website: www.unpaused.net
Judy enters the monastic world of ÁBBATTE, where traditional Spanish artisanal techniques are used to create exquisite handwoven textiles. Project founder Elena Goded Rimbaud talks about transforming the ruins of a 13th century monastery in Segovia into the ÁBBATTE workshop and reviving the region’s handmade textile traditions there. Then, speaking from ÁBBATTE’s Madrid store, Elena describes the pieces they make - alpaca wool throws, textured carpets and silk scarves - in colours rendered with botanic dyes from the magical ÁBBATTE garden. Working alongside her art director daughter, Elena says ÁBBATTE strives to create textiles with a contemporary aesthetic while being grounded in the techniques of the past.
Show Notes
// Hosted by Judy Stewart // Translation by Marcella Echevarria
Produced by Caroline Hughes for Feast Collective
// Sound Engineer: Jason Millhouse
// Instagram: @_unpaused // Website: www.unpaused.net
Photographer and magazine founder, Ruth Ribeaucourt, talks to Judy about her creative collaboration with cult French interiors and homewares brand, Antoinette Poisson.
After photographing ‘A Year in the French Style’ for the brand’s founders, Vincent Farelly and Jean-Baptiste Martin, Ruth was invited to collaborate with them a second time on a range of wallpapers and fabrics, based on their shared love of historic French textiles and patterns.
Ruth recounts how visiting flea markets and collecting antique textiles as a novice collector, first helped her to learn the language and assimilate the culture of her adopted home when she moved to Provence from her native Ireland, and talks about FAIRE, the magazine she founded, to take her readers inside the creative lives of artists, artisans and curators from France and around the world.
You can listen to Judy's previous conversation with Ruth in Episodes 14 and 15 of Unpaused.
Show Notes:
Antoinette Poisson is known for reviving traditional paper dominoes—beautiful, repeat-pattern domino prints. With a cheeky nod to French history, they were named after King Louis XV’s favourite mistress, better known as Madame de Pompadour.
'A Year in the French Style: Interiors and Entertaining with Antoinette Poisson’ by Vincent Farelly and Jean-Baptiste Martin
// Hosted by Judy Stewart // Produced by Caroline Hughes for Feast Collective
// Sound Engineer: Jason Millhouse
// Instagram: @_unpaused // Website: www.unpaused.net
Judy steps inside the wondrous Madrid atelier of Ana Lamata, maker of exquisite bespoke hats and a world many may have thought was a distant memory.
Surrounded by hat boxes, hand dyed ribbons, linings and trims and her collection of traditional millinery tools, Ana tells Judy how her love of wearing and collecting hats first inspired her to leave behind a promising career as an art historian to become a professional milliner, learning her craft from millinery legend, Rose Cory, milliner to the late Queen Mother.
This is a wonderful tale of reinvention told through the lens of a true 21st century artisan.
Her deliberate change of career direction speaks to Ana’s belief in the power and eloquence of clothing and specifically, headwear to address the social history, art, and culture in which they were created in their very own way. In this sense, every Ana Lamata hat is an important artefact, not just for the wearer but for the connoisseur and historian. For Ana, every hat tells a precious story.
Show Notes:
// Hosted by Judy Stewart // Produced by Caroline Hughes for Feast Collective// Sound Engineer: Jason Millhouse //
// Instagram: @_unpaused // Website: www.unpaused.net
Welcome back! In this new series, Unpaused is changing direction. No longer about corporate women reinventing corporate careers, the new Unpaused will be about women who broke with their careers and found a new calling by making something important with their hands. Judy has tried to bring the visual into the realm of the podcast to better convey these transformations in both colour and texture so have a look at Unpaused’s new website and Instagram page for more.
To ignite this new chapter, Judy delves into the story of the renowned Australian desert artist, Emily Kam Kngwarray. One of the most significant painters to emerge in the late twentieth century, Kngwarray's monumental canvases and vibrant batiks immediately conjure her life as an elder from the Utopia region of Australia. Remarkably she only found her calling in her 8th decade, beginning a career as an artist that lasted until her death at 86 or thereabouts.
Emily's international renown has been fostered, in part, by gallerist D’Lan Davidson of Dlan Contemporary in Melbourne.
In this interview, Judy speaks to D’Lan and the Head of Research at D'Lan Contemporary, Vanessa Meloni, and joins with them in an exploration of Emily’s remarkable late-life awakening.
Show Notes
// Hosted by Judy Stewart // Produced by Caroline Hughes for Feast Collective//Sound Engineer: Jason Millhouse
// Instagram: @_unpaused // Website: www.unpaused.net
Coming very soon: a brand new season of Unpaused with Judy Stewart.
Unpaused is changing direction. No longer about corporate women reinventing corporate careers, the new Unpaused will be about women who broke with their careers and found a new calling by making something important with their hands.
In new episodes, Judy will look at the creative lives of makers, artists and designers from around the world, including an extraordinary Spanish hat-maker and an expert on French textiles, inspired by the mistress of a King.
In her first episode, Judy will look at the work of renowned Australian artist Emily Kam Kngwarray, whose career blossomed, remarkably, in her eighth decade.
There is much to inspire on Unpaused's new website and Instagram page in the lead up to the new season, so have a look there and then listen when Unpaused returns to your feed, fortnightly on Thursdays.
Earlier this year, Judy chanced upon meeting Carolina Guthmann, who, with her husband (former Italian television journalist Piero di Pasquale), are the creative forces behind Manima World in Palermo; a digital atelier of fine, hand embroidered home linens and ready to wear.
If there are two words that make my heart beat faster, they are hand embroidered. When Carolina told me it was her mission to preserve and empower the embroideresses of Sicily, I was in.
Listen to Carolina discuss the history of Sicilian embroidery, her big career change and her passion for working with local women sustaining centuries-old skills, on Unpaused now.
Show Notes:
// Hosted by Judy Stewart // Produced by Leonie Marsh // Sound Engineer: Jason Millhouse //
// Instagram: @_unpaused // Website: www.unpaused.net
Margot McKinney is a fourth generation jeweller who has built a global fine jewellery empire. Having hit rock bottom in her early forties, Margot made a fine comeback by backing her own belief that if she liked a piece of jewellery, even if it was shamelessly bold, others would surely follow. And follow they did.
She's now the second biggest supplier of jewellery to Neiman Marcus, the biggest luxury department store chain in the US. Recognising both her talent and success as a local girl made good, she has just closed a blockbuster retrospective of the pieces that made her career staged here at the Museum of Brisbane. Not surprisingly, it was a sellout from the day it opened. If there's one thing I've learned about Margot, it's that she's bold in everything she does.
Listen now to Margot on Unpaused.
Show Notes:
// Hosted by Judy Stewart // Produced by Leonie Marsh // Sound Engineer: Jason Millhouse
// Instagram: @_unpaused // Website: www.unpaused.net
At the end of 2006, a French patisserie bakery and cafe called Choquette opened in Brisbane. And with it a small slice of French epicurean life began to take root. Proprietor Lara Keating's dream to create an authentic French cafe experience drew deeply on the influence of her French mother, Francoise. The coffee was great and the pain-au-raisin glorious. Before long, she was partnering with the baker to set up a second standalone wholesale bread business.
Everything was humming along nicely when she was hit. Not just with the pandemic, but with a truly biblical flood.
Listen to Lara now on Unpaused.
// Hosted by Judy Stewart // Produced by Leonie Marsh // Sound Engineer: Jason Millhouse
// Instagram: @_unpaused // Website: www.unpaused.net
Catherine Walker is the most modest of success stories; retired but by no means idle. I find her happily sequestered in an early Tasmanian farmhouse in picturesque Longford. But it wasn't that long ago that she was being pulled into lead Australia's humanitarian efforts in the Solomon Islands, in Afghanistan and witnessing heartbreaking famine firsthand in North Korea as Australia's minister on the World Food Program. Catherine worked with Australia’s official aid program for twenty-two years and held senior development roles overseas, including in Timor Leste as the Chief of Donor Coordination with the United Nations and in Solomon Islands as the Development Coordinator with the Regional Assistance Mission (RAMSI). Beneath all this though is the beating heart of a modern day Georgian enthusiast with an eye for what's exquisite, valuable, and collectible. Listen to Catherine on Unpaused now.
// Hosted by Judy Stewart // Produced by Leonie Marsh // Sound Engineers: Lana Kristensen and Jason Millhouse
// Instagram: @_unpaused // Website: www.unpaused.net
Carol Westmore is a very capable woman. A mathematician by training, she exudes order and authority. However, Carol has found herself immersed in an adventure very much of her own making; the restoration of the artist John Glover's house and farm near Deddington (40kms from Launceston) in Tasmania, Australia. In embracing that undertaking; enormous, costly and full of the usual joys and setbacks, she unwittingly began to engineer her reinvention as chaperone of Glover Cottage and keeper of the Glover flame. A career evolution, which is still unfolding in the most intriguing ways. Listen now.
Show Notes:
Further reading:
// Hosted by Judy Stewart // Produced by Leonie Marsh // Sound Engineers: Lana Kristensen and Jason Millhouse
// Instagram: @_unpaused // Website: www.unpaused.net
For 8 years, Danielle Alvarez presided at Fred's on Oxford Street, Sydney, over a stylish open kitchen and hearth, roasting pedigreed lamb legs and chickens, in full view of the fortunate few to have secured a booking. And, if Oxford Street was a long way from the Cuban immigrant community in which Danielle grew up in Miami, Florida, the imprint of that exotic childhood, and her grounding in the pioneering farm-to-table ethos of the US west coast restaurant culture of the 2000s, all found their mark. She has stopped to catch her breath, putting the finishing touches to the manuscript of a new cookbook, her second. To hear Danielle as she works through what began as a pause, but seems to be burgeoning into a new chapter, listen now.
Show Notes:
// Hosted by Judy Stewart // Produced by Leonie Marsh // Sound Engineers: Lana Kristensen and Jason Millhouse
// Instagram: @_unpaused // Website: www.unpaused.net
She writes to paint… or perhaps she paints to write. Either way, Naomi Bulger is a woman who has both sides of her brain hot-wired. And to think it all began with making rural commodities sound sexy. Listen now on Unpaused.
Show Notes:
// Hosted by Judy Stewart // Produced by Leonie Marsh // Sound Engineers: Lana Kristensen and Jason Millhouse
// Instagram: @_unpaused // Website: www.unpaused.net
Eleanor Roosevelt conducted a parallel life beyond the view of most of the American people, despite occupying the most prominent role for a woman in the country at that time. She maintained two different apartments in Washington Square in New York before and after the White House years and thereby opened the way to a host of new friends and renewed purpose. ER’s reinvention was a remarkable one, sparked, on one reading, by physically removing herself from the constraints of husband and family and surrounding herself with a coterie of women who rejoiced in the intellectual, the cultural and the political. In doing so, she herself was transformed.
Show Notes:
// Hosted by Judy Stewart // Produced by Leonie Marsh // Sound Engineers: Lana Kristensen and Jason Millhouse // Instagram: @_unpaused // Website: www.unpaused.net
What happens when one of the most famous women in the world goes back to work? She proves she has something to give by giving her all and leaving a legacy that no one can argue with. Jackie’s last 20 years were a study in how fulfilling a working life can be. She didn’t need to do it, she didn’t have to do it; she wanted to do it. And with two marriages behind her and two children at school, no one was going to hold her back. At 45, she reclaimed her career and got down to work.
Show Notes:
Jackie's favourite novels:
// Hosted by Judy Stewart // Produced by Leonie Marsh // Sound Engineers: Lana Kristensen and Jason Millhouse // Instagram: @_unpaused // Website: www.unpaused.net
Sustainable luxury travel expert, Juliet Kinsman, is your go-to person if the travel hotspots of the world that give back are on your wish list. She’s smart, she’s well -informed and she’s on Unpaused.
Show Notes:
// Hosted by Judy Stewart // Produced by Leonie Marsh // Sound Engineers: Lana Kristensen and Jason Millhouse // Instagram: @_unpaused // Website: www.unpaused.net
India Hicks has been called the quintessential Brit “It” Girl-turned-entrepreneur but it's her latest chapter as a committed philanthropist that intrigues. Eloquent, provocative and never dull, here's India Hicks re-imagined on Unpaused.
Show Notes:
// Hosted by Judy Stewart // Produced by Leonie Marsh // Sound Engineers: Lana Kristensen and Jason Millhouse // Instagram: @_unpaused // Website: www.unpaused.net
Today, I am bringing you a story that is unfolding on a small Greek island - SYROS, where author and economist Oana Aristide has renovated a run-down, neo-classical villa into a jewel box of a hotel of just 9 suites, called Hotel Aristide.
Oana’s personal story is a dramatic one. She grew up in Soviet-occupied Romania in her grandmother’s care, when her parents and sister defected - without her - to Sweden. She trained formally as an economist, a role which took her into the halls of presidential power in Bucharest, before a career in economic advisory in London and Europe. On any reckoning, in economics Oana had built the foundation of a solid professional career.
But she was busy after hours as well, writing and editing a first novel, Under the Blue, which, with some prescience, describes an epic road journey during a devastating global pandemic, brought on by the unanticipated effects of climate change. This is a classic Unpaused episode; enjoy.
// Hosted by Judy Stewart // Produced by Leonie Marsh // Sound Engineers: Lana Kristensen and Jason Millhouse // Research Assistant: Claudia Cameron // Instagram: @_unpaused // Website: www.unpaused.net
Becoming a mother heralds a dramatic change in the lives of Australian women. New mothers go from spending a weekly average of two hours caring for others to a staggering 51 hours. And when women become mothers, they also increase the time they spend on housework, like cooking, cleaning and washing, leaping from a weekly average of 16 hours to 25 hours in not much more than the blink of an eye. Statistics like these bring the whole issue of gender equality into a new realm.
Married with three daughters, Nicolette Rubinsztein (author of 'Not Guilty') has lived this conflict and come out the other end with a well-developed plan for how to smooth the way to a happier and fairer household for the working mother. Having led strategy for Colonial First State, the wealth management arm of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia for 12 years, during the first 2 years of which she also had her first baby, Nicolette knows more than most about thinking her way out of a problem. Despite reducing her hours to become part time, she managed to retain her rank and position as one of Colonial's general managers and go on to have two more children as well. How did she do it?
// Hosted by Judy Stewart // Produced by Leonie Marsh // Sound Engineers: Lana Kristensen and Jason Millhouse // Research Assistant: Claudia Cameron // Instagram: @_unpaused // Website: www.unpaused.net
In our first episode of Season 5 I’m doing something different: interviewing Annabelle Hickson and recording it before a live audience at ‘Bertholme’, a heritage-listed, 19th century sandstone house on the outskirts of Brisbane’s CBD. Annabelle is here to promote her brand new publication GALAH magazine, which of course, is not her first foray into the world of publishing and the printed word, but definitely her most ambitious.
Annabelle’s story is the ultimate Unpause and this chat is a timely follow up from my first interview with her (Ep 11) which took place during a time of professional uncertainty for her. That time of questioning her place in the working world has certainly now paid off as she forges her way in her new role as Magazine Editor-in-Chief (and writer and designer and distributor and funder!)
// Hosted by Judy Stewart // Produced by Leonie Marsh // Sound Engineers: Lana Kristensen and Jason Millhouse // Research Assistant: Claudia Cameron // Instagram: @_unpaused // Website: www.unpaused.net