Antique Coro Duettes Enamel Rhinestone Love Birds (Atlanta, GA)

Antique Coro Duettes Enamel Rhinestone Love Birds

Antique Coro Enamel & Rhinestone lovebirds Duettes dress fur clip brooch hallmarked patent This pair of rare Coro Duette Lovebirds is presented by Lisa LePaige who has hosted her own shows on the Gem Shopping Network and Today s Shopping Network click on the link below to show or visit Buy Rare Stuff At the end of the company s existence I believe that while the US manufacturing in Providence was discontinued that the Coro Canada manufacturing plant continued to produce items for another 15-20 years. You may occasionally find items marked Coro Canada here in the US I am guessing it is much more common to find these pieces in Canada.While many other companies produced pairs of dress or fur clips connected on a metal frame to form a larger brooch Coro seems to have been by far the most prolific and imaginative in this regard. Duette is the term that Coro coined for this versatile mechanism and like the term Kleenex it has become a word used to indicate this double clip piece even for companies that weren t Coro (though Trifari used the term clipmates rather than duette for their product). Coro s duettes not only encompassed the usual clear rhinestone potmetal bread and butter type piece but also wonderful figurals including florals horses birds and bees with enamels colored rhinestones and other specialty stones. Even the clear rhinestone duettes came in a wonderful variety of shapes and sizes. In business from around the turn of the 20th century until the late 1970 s Coro was one of the most if not the most prolific costume jewelry companies of all time. The name Coro came from a contraction of the first two letters of the last names of the original owners Cohn and Rosenberger. Operating under many different names the above mentioned Coro Corocraft Francois and Vendome are the most well-known with Vendome Corocraft and Coro Duettes being the most sought after. Ranging from low to high price points the best that this company had to offer rivals almost any other high end manufacturer. During the height of the Great Depression this company was so successful that they built a new manufacturing facility in Providence RI and almost all of the work was done in-house . While quality complexity of design and calibre of components was reflected in the price point where it was marketed I have not ever seen a piece that was poorly constructed. The higher end lines were sold at high end department stores while the less expensive lines were sold in smaller department stores and dimestores such as Woolworths.Dress clips were popular from the late 1920 s through the 1950 s with double prong (fur) clips being used as early as 1928 (Cartier by Judy Rudoe). Pairs of dress clips and fur clips were mounted in removable pinback frames to be worn together as a single brooch and were called clip-pins . Many companies and designers made their own versions with some being patented and others not. A few were Coro Trifari Polcini Eisenberg Haskell Leo Glass Calvaire Fred Block Mazer Boucher Reinad Nettie Rosenstein Hattie Carnegie Deja Reja Staret Vogue. The Duette measures 2 1 2 X 1 3 4 assemble. Excellent condition with very minor enamel loss. Circa 1930-1950. Patent no 1798887Coro-Corocraft-Francois-Vendome-Coro Duettes clipmates