The St. James’s district of London is thought for its gents’s golf equipment, aristocratic residences and craft specialists together with tailors, milliners and perfumers. Lately becoming a member of them is the 175-year-old British jeweler Hancocks & Co., which final month relocated its showroom from a store throughout the Burlington Arcade within the Mayfair district to a renovated Georgian townhouse on St. James’s Road.
The two,000-square-foot website has elevated the store’s retail area tenfold, the corporate director Man Burton stated, calling the transfer a “full circle” second that returned the jeweler to its Nineteenth-century glory days.
Hancocks opened in 1849 on Bruton Road in Mayfair as a jewellery, silverware and gemstone service provider. “From the descriptions we’ve got, it was truly sort of an analogous vibe to this,” Mr. Burton stated throughout a tour of the brand new showroom, designed to resemble a personal dwelling, with antique-inspired furnishings, paneled partitions and dealing fireplaces.
He described the three retail flooring as galleries, named after earlier Hancocks places.
On the bottom ground is the Sackville Gallery. Hancocks was on that Mayfair road from 1916 to 1970. The gallery showcases “a little bit of every part,” stated Mr. Burton, together with signed classic jewellery, vintage tiaras and Hancocks’ personal designs.
One ground up, the Bruton Gallery shows vintage and classic jewellery from the Georgian period to the mid-Nineteenth century in brass cupboards hung in opposition to teal velvet drapes. And nonetheless greater is the Burlington Gallery, with its Artwork Deco-inspired chandelier, pink lime-washed partitions and Champagne bar hid inside a cabinet. Right here the main focus is on Hancocks’ newly created jewellery, predominantly repurposed antique-diamond rings.
The highest ground comprises workplaces and a images studio.
The bigger area requires a bigger workers and so, Mr. Burton stated, he deliberate to extend the top rely from 4 to 12. Along with these, he and three different members of the family personal and run the enterprise. His sister, Amy, curates the classic choice and creates bespoke designs, whereas his mom and father are firm administrators.
The Burtons, nevertheless, are usually not descendants of the founder, Charles Frederick Hancock. The 12 months he opened, the jeweler acquired a Royal Warrant from Queen Victoria: a mark of recognition awarded by members of the British royal household to corporations that provide items and companies. It was the primary of 4 Royal Warrants awarded to Hancocks.
Queen Victoria additionally tasked Mr. Hancock with crafting the Victoria Cross, the best ornament of the British honors system, awarded to members of the armed forces for acts of utmost bravery. Hancocks nonetheless makes each Victoria Cross, an honor which is “way more essential than any Royal Warrant we’ve ever held,” Mr. Burton stated.
The brand new website additionally showcases a set of management copies of the Victoria Cross, which Mr. Burton described as priceless due to their historic significance. The crosses and different archive items have been beforehand stored in a secure and a part of the enchantment of shifting to a bigger area, Mr. Burton stated, was the possibility to show and have fun the home’s heritage.
He additionally stated he had employed a historian to “unravel” the tales behind the corporate’s shoppers and commissions.
One supply of knowledge is an organization diary began in 1866 by Mr. Hancock.
“It’d say, ‘John who cleans the silver died — consumption’,” Mr. Burton stated. “It may be ‘the Emperor Napoleon came over in the present day.’ One in every of my favourite ones is, ‘final night time drunk prostitute threw stone by way of store window’.”
The diary could be seen within the ground-floor gallery, and Mr. Burton stated he deliberate to digitize it and publish it on-line.
In 1970, the home moved from Sackville Road to a store on Burlington Gardens, off Bond Road, and targeted on silverware. However by 1977, the final descendant of Mr. Hancock had retired. Within the Nineteen Eighties, the home risked going into administration, a authorized course of just like chapter. Mr. Burton’s father, Stephen, had opened an antique-jewelry store subsequent door and bought Hancocks in 1992: He “rescued it, by bringing it again to what Hancocks all the time used to do,” Man Burton stated. In 1998, the corporate moved to the Burlington Arcade. Mr. Burton joined the enterprise in 2008 and specialised in buying and selling vintage diamonds. In 2011 he reintroduced Hancocks’ personal line of British-made jewellery now priced from 4,500 to 600,000 kilos.
Mr. Burton stated he had lengthy hoped to develop. The Burlington Arcade store might solely show half of his inventory, most of which was in window shows. He felt that the standard format with counters and a scarcity of personal area didn’t present an elevated buyer expertise or give the distinctive items the therapy they deserved.
It took 4 years to search out the precise spot, he stated, and work started on the St. James’s townhouse in November 2023.
Now, its partitions are lined with proof of Hancocks’ historical past, together with the crests of the royal households it has equipped — from the kings and queens of Portugal, Spain and the Netherlands, to “The Shah of Persia” and “The Sultan of Turkey.”
