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Philip joined in the 1970s
Sotheby's, the world's top auction house,
In today's view, it is already a veteran figure in the auction industry,
Now he is the chairman of the cross-border collection art fair "Giant Collection".
At the age of 48, he left London,
Moved to Jersey to live.
He inherited a 17th-century stone house left by his family,
Over the past 20 years, this dilapidated farmhouse has gradually been turned,
Transformed into a "haven" that locals talk about.
He built a home that rivals a museum.
Whether it is a knife and fork on the table,
Or the books on the shelves, the paintings on the walls,
Even the tiles on the floor,
All may be museum-level treasures that have disappeared for centuries.
Philip Hewat-Jaboor is currently the chairman of the Masterpiece Fair
Philip loved and immersed himself in the study of these "antiquities",
Explore the history, stories, and cultures behind them.
"It brings me indescribable pleasure and romance."
He searched everywhere for these lost treasures,
Let them see the light of day again,
Also incorporate antiquities into your daily life:
Eating with 18th-century tableware, planting flowers in 3rd-century pots...
Sounds pretentious, but he thinks:
There is no point in simply owning works of art.
Only when you touch it, use it,
in order to truly appreciate and understand them.
In early June, a visit to Philip's home.
Written by Zhu Yuru, responsible editor Chen Ziwen
Funky Philip with his cute cat Felice
Whether it is 5 o'clock in the morning or 12 o'clock in the evening, Philip is always a second to reply to the message, often making us sigh: This grandpa is also too cool, is he really almost 70 years old?
Outside of being a young man, he talks playfully and sends information with a cute photo of a family of cats. I also love to play social networks and post several Instagram messages every week. He also loves to dress up, and many fashion and life magazines have written about his dressing style.
Outside the main entrance of Philip's house
One summer, via remote video, Philip led us to visit his near-finished home, which he had spent 20 years renovating.
In the garden, which ranges from light to dark colors, sits a small two-storey building surrounded by large areas of undeveloped forest and scattered castles.
Different view from each window
Every room in the home has a great view of the garden through the window, which is crucial for Philip. He spent a lot of time and energy personally tending the garden, which has a Chinese pavilion for reading and drinking tea.
He pointed to a small hill outside the window and said, "That's my secret base." The library, built on a hill, is the most stunning part of the entire renovation, displaying thousands of his favorite books and rare stone antiquities.
The library built by digging the mountain has a lot of money in it
In fact, in his home, you can't distinguish which are collections, which are decorations, and which are daily necessities. Because every piece of the collection is integrated into all aspects of daily life by him, it is practically used.
"Truly living with these exquisite works of art, to explore the history, stories, and culture behind them, rather than simply owning them, has brought me indescribable pleasure and romance."
The following is Philip's statement.
Retreat to a small island and renovate an old house
This early 17th century farmhouse belonged to my parents, who moved here in the 1970s. Later, after the death of his father, his stepmother also moved away. Over 40 years old, I decided to move from the city back to the island to settle down.
The farmhouse itself is small, with low interior space and small windows. The surface of the houses is rich in granite on the island, and all the old houses here are like this, dark and dull. After a little bit of my transformation, it is now a new look.
The center round table was transformed from a slice of stone pillars from the 1st century AD; the chandelier is an antique from 1810
As soon as I entered the door, I wanted to give the impression of a stunning debut: through a relatively small Romanesque bronze door, I entered a tall room with a circle of display areas.
Here is my best collection of porphyry on display, surrounded by seemingly simple backgrounds, but in fact hidden mysteries.
This set of florets was originally designed for the King of Sweden and Philip waited 25 years to obtain it
The walls are made of a mixture of cement, mica and fine sand and stone, which glow softly at night, reflected in moonlight and dim light.
Then came the living room, which turned out to be two small, very low rooms with poor light. After we opened it, we dug down more than 30 centimeters and changed it to a regular square.
In order to introduce sunlight, mirrors were installed around each small window. There are also a lot of mirrors used in the room, making the space look larger and creating an interesting effect, as if people appear in three spaces at the same time.
My partner and I love inviting friends to our homes and hosting events, and this is our main meeting and entertainment space.
The two paintings on the wall are photographs by Francis Frith
The collection in the living room is more diverse in variety and age: the bronze sculpture of Prometheus in the Renaissance, the pain on the faces of the figures comes to life; the pioneering photographer Francis Frith in Egypt in the 1850s with a large camera, the predecessor of today's landscape postcards; the mahogany display case in 1802, which was designed for his home by my collector's idol Thomas Hope...
Mahogany display cases display rare stone objects from ancient Egypt and Rome from 2500 BC to the 1st century AD
Art collections are used to live together
On the other side of the living room is the dining room, where I have basically retained the feel of an 18th-century British family restaurant. Paintings from that period are hung on the walls, and the furniture is basically left by parents.
For me, this room always evokes many memories of youth. The Chinese export porcelain in the middle of the table is the only piece left by my grandfather, which is an ice wine vessel that my grandfather has always loved to use.
A silver-plated tray made in 1817 with the inscription on the back of the designer William W. Bush. Bedford's Medal, which was Philip's collector's idol
In addition to this, my collection of silverware and ceramic tableware is on display in the restaurant. These are all fine works that have disappeared since the 19th century, and I have gone through many twists and turns, consulted many materials, and traveled from place to place to find them again. This fun of spending time and energy on treasure hunting yourself is incomparable.
Every day, one of the most exciting moments for me is to set up the table with these wonderful antique cutlery and eat with my family.
It may seem to some to be a pretense, but any work of art, whether it is furniture, silverware, floralware, or paintings, is created to live together, to be touched, to be used, to sit on it to rest, to eat with it...
The second floor is the master bedroom, the original floor is so high pressure that people are breathless, I directly knocked the roof off and made a tent-like top design.
Embossed ebony cabinetry from the 17th century
The Indian ebony cabinet in the bedroom, with its bas-relief pattern, is unusually beautiful, and there are many small drawers of different shapes and sizes. At first glance, I thought it was a great fit for my tie, belt and pocket scarf.
I love fashion and there are a lot of these little things. Friends often laugh at me, saying that I am probably the last person in the world who still insists on wearing these accessories every day when I am older.
I also have a lot of floral objects, mostly from the 18th century. Every day, fresh flowers are plucked from the garden and planted in them, or some greenery is planted in them, and then some photos are taken to share on social media, hoping to dispel people's fears and sense of distance from these age-old works of art.
There is no point in simply having these things, and only when you really touch them and use them can you really appreciate and understand them.
The library is located on a hillside next to the main building
Cave Library
On the hillside next to the main house, I dug a big hole in the hard rock. A garage and a wine cellar were built underneath, filled with pictures and portraits of me and my partner, as well as our cats.
Above, I built a library dedicated to art books and a display space for collections.
Enter a very dark and low corridor first, creating a feeling of an ancient tomb.
Then push open the door and you'll be pleasantly surprised. The room was large with a skylight on top and very bright.
Bookcases, doors, tables, and floors are inlaid with all kinds of rare stones, both ancient and modern, and I am very obsessed with this field.
Compared with rarity and diplomatic significance, the story of these rare stones over thousands of years, and the life force that stretches through time and space, are the most fascinating to me, very romantic. I spend a lot of time reading, talking to scholars, and studying the history behind each piece.
Earliest, these rare stones were brought to Rome from remote areas of the Roman Empire in the 2nd and 4th centuries AD and made into pillars. Later, it was reused by the church and appeared in places such as the Vatican Basilica and the Pantheon. Finally, during the Renaissance, craftsmen transformed these pillars into elaborate utensils such as vases.
The library is designed to pay homage to my love of rare stones, and I often move their positions to appreciate them in different ways and angles.
Some of the fragments are dated from the 1st to 3rd centuries AD
I also have a collection of interesting fragments that inspire the imagination: a stone lion in the first century AD, with a charming hair texture on its body; a leg of Pharaoh Ramsey III...
In the process of digging the hole, there was an accident. I was abroad at the time, and a friend from the island called and said, "I didn't even know you had a new swimming pool on the hill!" "I was confused and later learned that the entire foundation had collapsed.
The small rooms feature mainly Renaissance sculptures
But because of the misfortune, I can dig another 2 meters deep and build a small room.
The two rare stone treasure books on the table are the gods of the rare stone world, which are said to have been stolen in a major theft in 1745, and I was fortunate enough to find them 25 years ago. All the stones inside have retained their most original and strange shapes, which are inlaid in the pages. Almost everyone who came was curious about them.
I often stay here for weeks, from morning to night, reading frantically and heavily. Every time you open a book, you always get some new inspiration, which is very wonderful.
The frantic reading Philip and the sleepy Phyllis
The Road to Collecting
Today, I have been collecting for more than 40 years, and my grandfather and uncle were very important to my cultivation from an early age.
When I was a kid, every summer I would go and live with my grandfather. He began collecting the fine chinese porcelain for export in the 1950s, and was one of the most important British collectors in this field at that time.
The only piece of grandpa's porcelain collection, Philip cherished very much
In the evening, when he comes home from work, he takes a piece of porcelain out of the cupboard, and his heart melts.
He was no longer the serious, timid aristocratic grandfather, but a great and passionate collector who shared with me what he loved. This memory has led me all the way to the fascination and sinking of art.
I can't stop smiling when I think about the past
My first collection was a Christmas present from my uncle when I was 13, an 18th-century cream-colored ceramic teapot. I was immediately fascinated, so I began to use my pocket money to find some interesting teapots from various thrift stores and antique shops.
Uncle wasn't actually a professional collector, but he had all sorts of interesting works of art in his home, and he was very good at mixing and matching them. I have loved to go to his house since I was a child, and I am reluctant to leave every time.
The library is home to rare stoneware and floors designed by contemporary artists
This largely laid the core idea of my collection - cross-border collection. Weaken the boundaries of age, type and style, and return to the most essential attention to the texture, impact and beauty of objects.
One summer day when I was 18 years old, I suddenly received a message from the then Chairman of Sotheby's, Peter S. Thompson. Wilson had a phone call inviting me to attend the art school they had just founded in London.
The ghost made God send a difference, and I originally wanted to learn hotel management, and I agreed to it. At that time, there were only 5 people in our class, and every day we were surrounded by all kinds of wonderful works of art, and we admired and felt them wholeheartedly. I still remember those days.
After graduation, I was invited to work at Sotheby's newly established auction house. Soon, I and three colleagues started what is now known as the Client Consulting Department, which provides professional art consulting services, which is the true core of all auction houses today.
Philip's study
A group of fledgling young people, doing something that no one had tried before, every day is full of surprises and challenges. There were no computers at the time, so we manually flipped through and collated nearly 100 years of valuation records, visited the descendants of major collectors and artists, and visited their private collections.
This experience gave me the opportunity to engage with and learn about works of art from different periods, forms, styles, materials, and to think about how to bring them together and make them talk to each other, just as I do at home now. It's very exciting and you'll experience a richness and depth like never before.
fountainhead
When I was quarantined at home during the epidemic, I often stayed in the garden and went up the mountain to look at the distance.
My stepmother didn't like gardening very much, the previous layout of the garden was so strange that I removed almost everything and started from scratch.
Two bespoke works by contemporary artist Stephen Cox in the garden
We brought in a lot of soil to fill in the originally sloping garden so that it looked more open. In the layout, it is mainly considered from the two aspects of color and smell, the color is from light to intense, and the fragrance between each other will not conflict. This year, we added two new palm trees and a slice of Chinese peony.
In the garden, there are many places where people can stop and rest. In the middle stands a pavilion inspired by the Chinese style, which is my secret base, and I have deliberately installed heating in it so that I can sit in winter.
Even though I've just passed my 68th birthday, I feel motivated. I like to wake up early, spend the morning trying to get all the work done, and then leave the afternoon to myself, reading books, going out for a ride, and chatting with family and friends.
Coming to life in Jersey was probably one of the best choices of my life. Here, I allow myself to slow down and take the time to communicate more deeply with the people and things around me.
Great views of Jersey
There are not so many people on the island, so many parties, activities, everyone is far away, inviting a person to come to the house basically has to stay for a day, listen to each other's stories and feelings. The same is true of collections and books, taking the time to taste and study repeatedly.
Living with these beautiful works of art, I gained a deep pleasure. Not only in terms of pure visual beauty, but more importantly, the culture behind each piece, the process of finding it everywhere, the romance given by history and stories.
I also sell things occasionally. Because once an object's moment of fascination has passed, it doesn't belong to you.
These works of art, like my friends, are inseparable from my life, and I would feel lost without them.
But if something inevitable happens one day, I think I'll only salvage the books in my library, because in the end that's the most important source of knowledge and pleasure for a person.
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