The Jeweler Hancocks Updates Its Home to Rediscover Its Past

The St. James’s district of London is understood for its gents’s golf equipment, aristocratic residences and craft specialists together with tailors, milliners and perfumers. Just lately becoming a member of them is the 175-year-old British jeweler Hancocks & Co., which final month relocated its showroom from a store inside the Burlington Arcade within the Mayfair district to a renovated Georgian townhouse on St. James’s Avenue.

The two,000-square-foot web site has elevated the store’s retail area tenfold, the corporate director Man Burton mentioned, calling the transfer a “full circle” second that returned the jeweler to its Nineteenth-century glory days.

Hancocks opened in 1849 on Bruton Avenue in Mayfair as a jewellery, silverware and gemstone service provider. “From the descriptions we have now, it was truly type of an analogous vibe to this,” Mr. Burton mentioned throughout a tour of the brand new showroom, designed to resemble a non-public residence, with antique-inspired furnishings, paneled partitions and dealing fireplaces.

He described the three retail flooring as galleries, named after earlier Hancocks areas.

On the bottom flooring is the Sackville Gallery. Hancocks was on that Mayfair avenue from 1916 to 1970. The gallery showcases “a little bit of all the things,” mentioned Mr. Burton, together with signed classic jewellery, vintage tiaras and Hancocks’ personal designs.

One flooring up, the Bruton Gallery shows vintage and classic jewellery from the Georgian period to the mid-Nineteenth century in brass cupboards hung towards 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 target is on Hancocks’ newly created jewellery, predominantly repurposed antique-diamond rings.

The highest flooring comprises places of work and a images studio.

The bigger area requires a bigger workers and so, Mr. Burton mentioned, he deliberate to extend the pinnacle rely from 4 to 12. Along with these, he and three different relations 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, will not be descendants of the founder, Charles Frederick Hancock. The yr he opened, the jeweler obtained a Royal Warrant from Queen Victoria: a mark of recognition awarded by members of the British royal household to firms 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 very best ornament of the British honors system, awarded to members of the armed forces for acts of utmost bravery. Hancocks still makes each Victoria Cross, an honor which is “much more essential than any Royal Warrant we’ve ever held,” Mr. Burton mentioned.

The brand new web site 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 mentioned, was the prospect to show and have fun the home’s heritage.

He additionally mentioned 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 would say, ‘John who cleans the silver died — consumption’,” Mr. Burton mentioned. “It is likely to be ‘the Emperor Napoleon came visiting at this time.’ Certainly one of my favourite ones is, ‘final night time drunk prostitute threw stone by store window’.”

The diary might be considered within the ground-floor gallery, and Mr. Burton mentioned he deliberate to digitize it and publish it on-line.

In 1970, the home moved from Sackville Avenue to a store on Burlington Gardens, off Bond Avenue, and centered 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 much like chapter. Mr. Burton’s father, Stephen, had opened an antique-jewelry store subsequent door and purchased Hancocks in 1992: He “rescued it, by bringing it again to what Hancocks all the time used to do,” Man Burton mentioned. 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 mentioned he had lengthy hoped to increase. The Burlington Arcade store may solely show half of his inventory, most of which was in window shows. He felt that the normal structure with counters and an absence of personal area didn’t present an elevated buyer expertise or give the distinctive items the remedy they deserved.

It took 4 years to search out the proper spot, he mentioned, 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 provided — from the kings and queens of Portugal, Spain and the Netherlands, to “The Shah of Persia” and “The Sultan of Turkey.”