Antique 1930s Diamond S Brand Bartlett Pears Crate Label 🍐 — E. M. Simpson, Hood, California

Who Packed Diamond S Pears? 🐴 Diamond S Brand Bartlett Pears, E. M. Simpson, Hood, California

Size: 11" x 8" ~ Little to no wear.

Two handsome horses on a pear label, and I think I know why. This is an antique 1930s Diamond S Brand Bartlett Pears crate label, shipped by E. M. Simpson of Hood, California, down in the Sacramento River Delta, and never used.

🔍 What's on it

Two horse heads face in from either side, palomino-chestnut with cream manes, in fine leather bridles with pearl-studded brow bands and beaded throat chains. Between them, the brand mark: a big white letter S inside a tilted blue diamond outlined in red, with DIAMOND on one side and BRAND on the other in yellow. Bartlett PEARS across the label, two ripe yellow Bartlett pears with dark green leaves at the lower left, E. M. Simpson in a yellow signature script over HOOD, CALIFORNIA, and NET WT. 46 LBS. in pale blue along the bottom, on a cream band over solid black. No printer is named. The back is plain.

🐎 E. M. Simpson and the Diamond S Ranch

The name, the town and the brand all match a real man and a real ranch. In the Pacific Rural Press of March 29, 1919, "E. M. Simpson, Diamond S Ranch, Hood" is listed among California's prominent Hereford breeders, with eighteen cows of Beau Eaton, Beau Defender, Hesiod Lad and Hesiod breeding, and the note "Demand very heavy; all sold out." He showed Herefords at the 1918 State Fair, and at the California International livestock show that November of 1919 he was entered with Clydesdales and American Saddle Horses. By the 1920s the Sacramento city directories list an E. M. Simpson of Hood as president of the Friend & Terry Lumber Co. So a man who showed fine horses shipped his pears under a label with two fine horses on it. Nobody's written down that it was the same fellow, but same name, same town, same Diamond S... I'd bet on it.

🍐 Hood and the Delta pears

Hood sits on the Sacramento River about fifteen miles south of Sacramento. It started out as Richland, a grain-shipping landing from 1860, but as the Delta switched from grain to fruit, Richland faded and its post office closed in 1888. In 1909 the Southern Pacific had the Hood Investment Company build a new town on the spot, and it was named for William Hood, the railroad's chief construction engineer. The railroad put up a big packing shed, seed farms and creameries, and even the Hotel Netherlands, for its dream of the "Netherlands of America." All along that stretch of river, Bartlett pears became the crop that meant Delta prosperity, and neighboring Courtland called itself the "Bartlett Pear Capital of the World."

🏡 Display

Imagine hanging this antique advertising on your wall as home decor in any room! Those horses look great framed in a den, a tack room or a kitchen, and it's a perfect gift for a horse lover, a Hereford breeder, or anybody from the Delta.

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.