THOMAS HANCOCK | Medallion portrait, in rubber, [1851]

HANCOCK, THOMAS

Medallion portrait in vulcanised rubber

black, c.220mm diameter, framed and glazed with a small plaque captioned "Thomas Hancock | 1786-1865 | Founder of British Rubber Industry | Patentee of Vulcanisation (1820) | Portrait in Rubber, Moulded for the | Great Exhibition, 1851", 385 x 310mm

The inventor Thomas Hancock (1786-1865) made a number of pioneering discoveries that enabled the industrial use of rubber, and from the 1820s onwards he worked in collaboration with Charles Macintosh (see lot 53). Macintosh & Co had stand 76 at the Great Exhibition, where they exhibited "India-rubber specimens, illustrative of its manufacture, and [a] collection of manufactured articles, vulcanized and unvulcanised." A similar medallion portrait is in the collection of the Science Museum.