Coro

How to read it

Two federal courts set out the mark’s history in a trademark case Coro brought in 1956 against a jewelry shop in Biloxi, Mississippi, trading as Caro; the district court found for Coro and enjoined the shop. The word Coro joins the first two letters of the founders’ names, given in the judgments as Cohen and Rosenberger. Coro had used it on its jewelry since about 1919, in block letters and in script, with and without a flying horse known as a pegasus, and registered it as a trademark in 1921. In the mid-1950s its costume jewelry sold for $1 to $20 at retail, and it had plants in the United States, Canada and England. The Vendome name, with a fleur-de-lis, is registered to K & M Associates LP of Providence, Rhode Island, in a registration first granted to Coro, Inc.

Also searched as: coro craft, corocraft, coro jewelry, coro jewelry marks, vendome.

The Corocraft mark and its winged horse

Costume Jewelry Collectors Int’l lists Coro in script set at an angle from 1919, and the Pegasus on its own, with no name, in 1939. Corocraft in script in a rectangle with the Pegasus beside it runs from 1933 to 1979, in sterling silver before 1950. Pamela Wiggins Siegel, writing in Antique Trader, notes the winged horse as part of the Corocraft logo, and gives Vendome as a higher-priced line of mainly beaded jewelry, made from the mid-1940s through 1970. The © appears after 1955.

When the name Coro began

The sources give different dates because they mean different things. The courts date the trademark Coro to 1919 and its registration to 1921. Costume Jewelry Collectors Int’l says the company took Coro as its corporate name in 1943, and Siegel says the name came into use in 1943. They also differ on the Providence factory: 1911 in the collectors’ history, 1929 in Siegel’s account.

Duettes

The Duette, two clips held in a frame so they can be worn as one brooch, was first patented by Coro in 1935, Siegel writes.

After the Rosenbergers

Emanuel Cohn died in 1910 and Carl Rosenberger in 1957. In 1969 the family sold 51 percent of Coro to Richton International Corp., which bought the rest in 1970, and by 1979 every Coro company except the Canadian one was bankrupt.

Coro and Weiss

Albert Weiss was a designer at Coro in the 1930s before he founded his own company in 1942.