There is arguably no more beautiful form of commercial American printing than the California crate label — and yet for decades, they were treated as packaging to be discarded after the fruit was sold. 🍊 Original Antique & Vintage Crate Labels preserves what survived from the golden age of chromolithographic produce packaging, spanning from the 1920s through the 1950s.

The collection spans original citrus crate labels from Sunkist and independent California growers featuring lemons, oranges, and grapefruit from Riverside County, Santa Barbara, and the Central Valley — apple and pear crate labels from Pacific Northwest orchards, vegetable and produce crate labels from Midwestern packers, and original can labels from Chicago and regional food processors. Many were printed by the great California lithography houses before offset printing collapsed the industry, making them genuine artifacts of a printing tradition that lasted less than 60 years. 🎨

Original crate labels have become major wall art collectibles — vivid, frameable, historically specific, and impossible to replicate convincingly. All items in this collection are original printed examples from the production period. Not reproductions. Not digitally restored facsimiles. The real thing, in whatever condition time has granted them.