A small brooch made by the West Ham Gutta Percha Company, associated with the Hancock family. It is made of gutta percha, a rubber product, and is oval shaped, dark brown, and embossed with a scroll design.

Gutta percha is a rigid plastic product derived from tree sap, known for being hard-wearing, inert and an electrical insulator. It was historically used as an insulator for electrical cables and later came to be used in dentistry.

This brooch was made to demonstrate the versatility of Gutta Percha and how its properties allow it to be shaped and finished to a fine standard. The West Ham Gutta Percha Company was set up by Charles and Walter Hancock c1850 as a competitor to the Gutta Percha Company. Charles and Walter Hancock were at the time in an ongoing dispute with Henry Bewley of the Gutta Percha Company over who was the rightful inventor and patentee of gutta percha.

This object is part of a collection relating to the Hancock family, acquired in 2018 from a descendant and family historian of the Hancocks. The collection comprises portraits covering 4 generations of the Hancock family, personal and business archives, and a series of related objects. Thomas Hancock is the centre of the story – inventor of the patent masticator and founder of the British rubber industry. The Hancock company ran until the 1930s, led by Thomas’s nephew and assistant, James Lyne Hancock, and then a great nephew John Hancock Nunn.