Collector has a passion for artifacts — even the skulls
Jessica Lindsay Phillips will share her love of collecting in a new CBC reality show
Someone wants to sell Jessica Lindsay Phillips a human skull.
She is fielding the offer on one phone while studying photos of it on another in her underground office on a recent Thursday afternoon. She sits dressed in black, wearing a tribal necklace and over-the-knee leather boots, surrounded by books, weapons and taxidermied animals. At her right foot is a tortoise. At her left foot is a jaguar.
“Is the neck separate?” she asks the caller, as if she were inquiring about the mileage on a used car.
If this was your first impression of Phillips, you might think you had stumbled into the lair of some princess of darkness.
But talk to her about the rarities and tribal artifacts she collects and she’s practically bubbly. Given the chance to share her life’s passion with others, she can’t contain her enthusiasm.
“Knowledge is what I really collect,” she says.
“There’s a story in (artifacts) that leads you to their culture, where they are, then you see the geographical side of it.
“That’s the beginning of learning a lot and when you can share that with other people they can learn something, and (it can) help them either find their passion or understand that part of the world a bit more.”
Starting Sunday at 8 p.m., Phillips will share her knowledge with TV audiences on CBC’s new reality show Four Rooms, which gives contestants the chance to sell their antiques, oddities and memorabilia to her and three other collectors.
Phillips, 31, grew up in Ottawa and started collecting “like any girl,” with Barbies and stickers.
Her love of the exotic and the ancient started at a young age, when her parents took her on regular trips to the Canadian Museum of Nature and flea markets.
She also inherited her father’s insatiable appetite for facts of all kinds — she calls it “useless useful information” — that he would pass down to her with every conversation.
After Phillips moved to Toronto, she took arts and contemporary studies at Ryerson University and worked a variety of jobs, from director of operations at a record label to pole-dance instructor. All along she kept collecting: old books, vintage party gowns, elephant figurines.
Then a friend introduced her to Billy Jamieson, a rock star collector specializing in all things tribal and macabre. He made his name when one of the mummies he bought from the Niagara Falls Museum in1999 turned out to be the lost Egyptian pharaoh Ramses I, and he sold artifacts to Mick Jagger and the Royal Ontario Museum, among other clients.
It was another few years before her friendship with Jamieson became romantic: “He asked me to come over for the weekend and I never really left.” That was about seven years ago.
Skulls and shrunken heads had never really been her thing, but the fact that Jamieson had them all over his loft (which doubled as a museum) didn’t faze her.
“I actually find them really comforting,” Phillips says. “That can sound a little strange, but it’s true.”
She points to some nearby skulls from Vanuatu and the highlands of Papua New Guinea, decorated with natural pigment, clay, shells and human hair. “These skulls were not meant to be buried. . . . Those are their ancestors. They’re made to remember and to be brought out.”
Jamieson’s life’s work became hers. She began travelling with him as he wheeled and dealed around the world, and appeared with him on a History Television series called Treasure Trader. Once again, she was learning something new with every conversation. “It’s something that you just end up breathing every day.”
Gayle Gibson, an Egyptologist and educator at the ROM, was a longtime friend and colleague of Jamieson’s. She said she was immediately struck by Phillips’ intelligence and by how quickly she found her footing in the field. Her lack of formal training didn’t hold her back, Gibson says.
“Sometimes that’s better, because you’re looking at things with fresh eyes, and you’re not quite so bound by what ought to be there or what usually is there. You can see what’s really there,” she says.
Phillips was engaged to Jamieson when he died suddenly of a heart attack in 2011, on his 57th birthday. She was devastated.
But, in a way, the years she spent learning about the rituals of death and mourning helped her through it.
“We collect death. We collect relics and moments of power and ancestors . . . and it all revolves around life and death and protection,” she says. “And you have to respect that when it happens, it happens. And then look for where your next purpose goes. And my next purpose is to take care of this collection.”
The collection consists of the 1,500odd items Jamieson amassed over 20 years. It’s her job to pare it down, selling most of it on behalf of his estate.
Phillips admits there aren’t many young, blond, heavily tattooed women in charge of collections of this scope.
“It makes me work harder. It makes me feel like I have to prove myself,” she says. “I take this job really seriously and I take this job with a lot of honour. . . . I’m very grateful that Billy had that much confidence in me.” As Gibson puts it, “She doesn’t let you not take her seriously. “Her toughness of mind and her independent spirit and her confidence in herself have been really important in getting that job done.” Last November, more than 300 items from Jamieson’s collection went up for auction at Ritchie’s. In April, about 400 more will be on the block at Waddington’s, including an electric chair from Auburn state prison in New York. Phillips admits that it’s been a challenge. “I’d love to always hold on to everything,” she says. But while there are a few special pieces she plans to keep in her personal collection, she recognizes the importance of letting things go, knowing they can take on a new life in a new set of hands. “They may look at it in a way you do not,” she says. “That’s how you learn. That’s how you keep history alive.” In some ways, Four Rooms provides a perfect opportunity to do that. Her conversations with guests on the show gave her a new way to learn about a mind-boggling assortment of collectibles. “To hear the stories of each seller that came on, and to also meet them right there, it’s magical,” she says. “You never know what you’re going to see and you never know if you’re going to see it again.”