Trifari crown mark

How to read it

The name is a trademark. In the US Patent and Trademark Office’s records, the crowned TRIFARI, which the Office files under crowns open at the top, was filed by Trifari, Krussman & Fishel, Inc. in 1947 and registered in 1949, claiming first use of the name on 20 December 1937. Its last owner was Kate Spade & Company, and it was cancelled in October 2021. A later TRIFARI registration for jewelry, filed in 2019 by Coach Services, Inc., was cancelled on 31 July 2026. The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, describes Trifari’s pieces as designed in New York City and made in Providence, where the firm ran four plants by 1952.

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The crown and the other Trifari marks

Costume Jewelry Collectors Int’l lists the firm’s marks in order. A TK in a circle appears in a 1922 directory of jewelry trade marks, and KTF, the partners’ initials, in 1935. The name in tall, elongated letters has been in use since December 1937, with a crown silhouette over the T in the 1930s and 1940s; the name in plainer letters under a different crown was the main mark of the 1940s and 1950s. Sterling silver was used from 1942 to 1947, often with a vermeil coating. Hang tags start in 1954, the © follows the name from 1955, and in the 1970s and 1980s the name appears in a cursive script inside a circle.

Why a © is on Trifari jewelry

It is a copyright notice, and Trifari went to court over it. In September 1955 a federal judge in New York granted Trifari a preliminary injunction against Charel Co. over a necklace of half beads, or cabs, each in a narrow rim of gold-coloured metal. The defendant had called it junk jewelry, too lowly to be a work of art; the court disagreed: “A necklace, like a circus poster or a book, is not to be denied the benefits of the Copyright Act”. It also accepted the notice, a c in a circle with the owner’s name, on the clasp, where by the custom of the industry the maker’s name usually appears. The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, notes that costume jewelry of the period had been heavily marked with patent and patent-pending numbers, and that after a successful copyright case Trifari stopped marking those numbers in 1955 and switched to the ©.

Trifari © on a hansom cab pin

A second case, in 1956, was over a pin in the shape of a hansom cab: Trifari’s sold for $15 and the copy for $1. The pin carried “Trifari ©” on the back, and its two paper labels read “Trifari, Krussman and Fishel, Inc. © Jewels by Trifari” and “Copyrighted Trifari”. The court held “Trifari ©” sufficient notice, though one of Trifari’s own pins shown in court bore only a very faint ©, and the printed labels did not meet the law’s requirement for a notice on the piece itself.

Trifari and Monet

In 2000 Liz Claiborne Inc. bought most of the assets of the Monet Group, whose brands then included Monet, Trifari and Marvella.