| The firm John Hancock and Company was the Philadelphia branch of a larger business involving five brothers in the furniture trade in Boston in the late 1810s and 1820s. The brothers expanded their business along kinship lines replicating a traditional pattern. Like many early nineteenth-century furniture makers, however, the Hancocks tapped expanding markets well beyond Boston, and explored several methods of marketing and selling their goods before opening the Philadelphia branch business.;In May 1830, John and Belcher Hancock established their wareroom in Philadelphia's commercial district, displaying a variety of upholstered chairs and sofas and less expensive non-upholstered furniture to suit a wide range of customers. The scale of the Hancocks' furniture business, their reliance on new technologies and production, and marketing strategies are indicative of changes in the business of making and selling furniture in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. In large part, these changes represent the response of furniture makers and upholsterers to the need to lower production costs.;Experimentation with spring-seat upholstery in the 1820s coincided with rising demand for upholstered furniture and other domestic comforts for a growing middle class. The Hancocks' substitution of iron-wire springs for curled hair represents the next best solution to providing resilient foundations and pleasing contours in less expensive furniture. Arguably, each development in materials and method aimed at reducing costs was experimental. Once a cost-cutting technology was developed as a reasonably viable alternative, however, a craftsman who wanted to remain competitive had little choice but to utilize it. By the end of the 1820s, seating furniture with spring-upholstered foundations predominated in the production of urban and rural shops alike. |
