Jonathan Wattis on his 30 years in Hong Kong's antiques trade

SHIP MATES My father had a mathematical mind, my mother was more literary, so I guess I’ve inherited a bit of both. When we started coming along – I’m the third of four children – my mother became a housewife. But before that she was a nurse. At 18, she went to London and was a nurse during the blitz. Then, after the war, she was on hospital ships out this way, picking up prisoners of war in 1945 and 1946. My father was a ship’s bursar in the army, on a hospital ship, when he met my mother. She came out (to Hong Kong) twice and worked at the British Military Hospital, in Bowen Road, in 1946. So I grew up with photograph albums of Hong Kong.

LETTERS FROM THE TRENCHES A geographical interest and an interest in pictures came back to me later on in life, when I discovered that my grandfather, my mother’s father, was a surveyor and auctioneer. I found these letters he had written from the trenches in France and Belgium in the first world war. I never knew him, he died around the time I was born. And I was horrified to discover that he had been shot and, as a result, he was deployed behind lines, doing topographical drawings. If he hadn’t been shot early on, he probably wouldn’t have survived. It gives me a sense of mortality, of how fragile life is.

JOBBING AROUND My first job, at the age of 18, was at National Westminster Bank in Somerset (southwest England). I was the most junior clerk you could be. I did a year at what was then South Bank Polytechnic, studying chartered accountancy, then various jobs, working in a record shop, and then at Harrod’s, packing Christmas hampers. In 1976, I was offered a job in a new company called Our Price Records. I think it was their second shop. In those days you could get bootlegs and, at that time, I had longer hair. The job at Harrod’s … there’s a network of tunnels underneath Brompton Road, in Knightsbridge, that go to a warehouse on the other side and we had little trains that pulled trucks full of this food. It was incredible because it was left over from Victorian times.

SHRUNKEN HEADS It was my 21st birthday and I decided that I wanted to work in an auction house and go into theatre. So I got two jobs. During the day I worked at Christie’s, in London’s South Kensington, as floor sweeper and porter. I also got a job at night working in the Palace Theatre – which was showing Jesus Christ Superstar – where I was a stage­hand.

Later I realised I was putting in too many hours and went with the auction house. We were in the basement of an old warehouse. There were treasures from all over the world on tables waiting to be catalogued and we had to distinguish what was good. The advantage of being there was that you met all these specialists.

The most extraordinary things I saw were possibly shrunken heads or a very fine Meissen porcelain figure. You had Tibetan thangkas … you were exposed to worldwide culture. I was constantly amazed at what I saw. When I joined Christie’s, furniture was the big thing. When you now look at the auction cata­logue, furniture is way down the list. Certain collection areas have disappeared.