1936 KTF Trifari Tutti-Frutti Bracelet
United States · Rhodium
$3,995.95
- Maker
- KTF TRIFARI
- Origin
- United States
- Era
- Alfred Philippe · 1936 · Art Deco
- Materials
- Rhodium
- Provenance
- Philippe’s tricolor ‘fruit salad’ in full Deco command: molded glass in ruby, sapphire, and emerald, framed by pavé crystal across a wide articulated link. From the early KTF era — the foundation on which Trifari’s reputation was built.
On this piece
When Cartier looked to India’s Mughal carvers in the 1920s — their rubies and emeralds cut as leaves and berries — the style was named Tutti Frutti, and it defined luxury for a decade. Trifari’s KTF workshop answered in kind. This 1936 bracelet, designed by the great Alfred Philippe, carries molded glass “fruit” in ruby red, sapphire blue, and emerald green, laced with pavé crystal and finished in cool silver rhodium. Collectors hold the mid-thirties KTF Fruit Salad as the finest work the house ever produced — some pieces made in runs of only a hundred — and it looks it: eighty-odd years on, the glass is as saturated as the day it was poured. Remember, too, when it was made — the depth of the Depression — and it becomes more than beautiful. It is defiance, cut in glass and worn on the wrist.