141 Cambridge Street Boston MA 02114-2702
Non-Profit Organization U.S. Postage PAID Boston, Massachusetts Permit No. 58621
A C Q U I S I T I O N S
A Rare Boston Sofa Neoclassical sofa by William Hancock. Boston, 1825–30. Mahogany, mahogany veneer.
A
s the Four Centuries of Massachusetts Furniture collaboration (www.fourcenturies.org) draws to a close, we have a chance to reflect on a recent addition to our own collection. This sofa was made by William Hancock, a successful furniture manufacturer and upholsterer working in Boston from 1819 to 1849. It is one of five nearly identical surviving examples; one is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the other three are in private collections. Three of the five (not ours)
are signed or labeled by Hancock. They all appear to date from the late 1820s and relate to a drawing in Thomas Sheraton’s 1805 volume of The Cabinet Maker, Upholsterer and General Artist’s Encyclopaedia. Ours had modern upholstery in poor condition and we decided to restore it using a more appropriate textile. We carefully stripped it hoping to find a thread of fabric under an original nail, but none survived. Historic New England owns a labeled William Hancock cushion of the same period.
The reproduction red damask shown here is based on that cushion. While the sofa itself offered no clues as to its original fabric, Supervising Conservator Alex Carlisle found evidence in the process that the sofa originally had springs, a very early use of what was then a new technology. See the newly restored Hancock sofa in the parlor at Otis House in Boston. —Nancy Carlisle Senior Curator of Collections
The award-winning Historic New England magazine is a benefit of membership. To join, please visit HistoricNewEngland.org