Antique 1930s Caledonia Brand Valencias Orange Crate Label 🍊 — Placentia Mutual Orange Ass'n, CA

Who Packed Caledonia Brand Valencias? 🍊 Caledonia Brand Valencias, Placentia Mutual Orange Ass'n.

Size: 10" x 10 3/4" ~ Little to no wear.

Scottish thistles on a California orange box! This is an antique 1930s Caledonia Brand Valencias crate label from the Placentia Mutual Orange Association of Placentia, Orange County, California, printed by the Western Litho. Co. of Los Angeles and never pasted on a crate. Caledonia is the old Latin name for Scotland, and the whole label is dressed for it.

🔍 What's on it

The label prints VALENCIAS over CALEDONIA BRAND, with a Scottish thistle laid across a tartan for the name, the California Red Ball emblem in the corner, the packer's line PLACENTIA MUTUAL ORANGE ASS'N., PLACENTIA, ORANGE COUNTY, CALIFORNIA, and REG. U.S. PAT. OFF. Hidden in tiny type on the tartan is the printer: LITHO. IN U.S.A. - WESTERN LITHO. CO., LOS ANGELES 143.

🔴 What the Red Ball meant

The Red Ball told the buyer the grade. Growers' associations that shipped through the California Fruit Growers Exchange packed their very best fruit under the Sunkist mark, and the good mid-grade fruit under Red Ball. Inspectors came around to make sure the fruit in the box matched the mark on the label, and a packer who cheated could be fined or put out of the Exchange. The Exchange itself became Sunkist Growers in 1952.

🌳 Placentia, the "pleasant place"

Placentia got its name from Sarah Jane McFadden, who in 1878 renamed the local school district with a Latin word she took to mean "a pleasant place to live." It's also where the Valencia orange got its start in California. A 1934 marker on the Cal State Fullerton campus, put up by the Native Daughters of the Golden West, says the first Valencia orchard in California was planted there in 1880 by R.H. Gilman on the property of the Placentia Fruit Co. (the county historical society puts Gilman's first grove a few years earlier, in 1875). Either way, Valencias took over. By 1936 Orange County was growing a sixth of the nation's Valencia crop on 64,000 acres, and citrus brought in two-thirds of the county's farm income. Around 1910 Placentia was a busy Santa Fe Railroad stop for shipping oranges, and the Placentia Mutual Orange Association's packing house was listed as a California historic resource in 1984.

The groves didn't last. In 1949 alone nearly 7,000 acres of Orange County orange trees disappeared, as the post-war building boom took the land.

🏴 One of a set

Caledonia wasn't a one-off. The Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, writing about this same association's Shamrock label, says that in the 1930s Placentia Mutual ran a whole line of brands named for the countries of the United Kingdom: Albion for England, Caledonia for Scotland and Cambria for Wales, with Shamrock likely rounding out the set for Ireland. The association was still in the hands of its founding president, John C. Tuffree, and Samuel Kraemer, who built its first packing house in 1911. Kraemer came from a German immigrant family and Tuffree's mother was born in Peru, so the British Isles theme was pure salesmanship, and a fun one.

🖨️ Western Litho. Co.

Western Lithograph Company was started in Los Angeles in 1899 by Anton Ernest Stoetzer, and from the beginning its main business was colorful crate labels for California citrus growers. It went through a few owners early on, was renamed Gilbert-Jones-Rugg for a few years, got its old name back by 1910, and ran until Brown-Bigelow bought it in 1953.

The Caledonia name goes back a long way. Placentia Mutual registered the CALEDONIA mark, thistle design and all, for fresh citrus fruits in 1924 (registration No. 189,883), and the record gives its first use as 1906. The mark was renewed for decades, later passing to the Blue Banner Company of Riverside, and wasn't allowed to lapse until 2005.

🏡 Display

Imagine hanging this antique advertising on your wall as home decor in any room! That tartan and thistle look great framed in a kitchen, a den or a pub room, and it's a perfect gift for anybody with Scottish roots, or anybody from Placentia or Orange County.

Crate labels are a reminder of a bygone era, and the lithography on them is unparalleled even to this day, in my opinion. Museums and art institutes have galleries dedicated to them, and more and more collectors are seeking them out to preserve their history. Once the limited supply for sale is gone and on display with collectors or in galleries, they will be very difficult to acquire.