The history of Coro jewellery

Emanuel Cohn and Carl Rosenberger formed a partnership in approx 1901 and this was incorporated in 1913. By this time they had already had a factory in Providence, Rhode Island, the centre of the jewellery trade, for two years.
During the course of the 1970s the business failed as did many other jewellery concerns. By 1979 the last section ( Canadian) of the firm was sold off and the Coro brands soon disappeared.
 
In the course of their trading they not only opened factories and offices in many other American cities but also in Mexico, Canada and England too. In England they were not allowed to trade under the name Coro as there was already a long established British jewellery firm called Ciro, instead they used the name CoroCraft and a large amount of their British sales were made under the name Jewelcraft.

Coro was a huge organisation who used many different names for different lines and did not always put their mark on their pieces. This can, and does, cause a lot of confusion for the collector.
Add to this the fact that their pieces were widely both copied and faked (copies being either identical or very similar to Coro pieces but unsigned, fakes being identical and having a false Coro mark) both at the time they appeared and up to the present day and it is easy to see that Coro is a minefield for the novice collector.

The history of Coro in the US is well documented (see RCJ page) but is much more unclear as far as their Canadian and British operations are concerned. We have some records and recollections to show that they were in London and Crawley from 1960 to 1972 and that the Jewelcraft brand was on sale here during the 1950s. If you have any knowledge or recollections about the British part of their business please contact Mary Walden-Till.
Luda Tovey has done years of research on Coro and their Canadian production and has interesting information online.

Coro employed many talented designers over the years and held a lot of Utility (mechanical) patents for mechanisms invented by their employees as well as the design patents for the look of the pieces.
Perhaps the most famous of their pieces are their duettes. The term duette should only ever be used in respect to Coro pieces as the name belonged to them, to be strict about it all similar pieces made by other firms (except Trifari who patented the Clip Mates) should be referred to as clip brooches. However, the term is often used in a generic way.
Coro duettes were made in a very large number of different designs. You can see some of them and utility designs here.

Coro designer Gene Verrecchia is always written as Verrecchio on Coro patents until the 1960 when he had changed his name to Verri.

You can see their patents at Jim Katz’s JewelryPatents site