Antique 1930s Royal Arms Crate Label 🍊 Lake Wales, Polk County, FL

Who Packed Royal Arms Citrus in Lake Wales? 🛡️ Royal Arms Brand, Lake Wales Citrus Growers Association, Lake Wales, Polk County, Florida

Size: 9" x 9" ~ Little to no wear.

It is an iconic, fantastic image of a Roman gladiator with a shield and sword prepared for battle! A big bearded warrior in a plumed helmet, armor straps, a kilt and steel greaves, planted wide on a moss green ground with a lion on his shield and gold fleurs-de-lis all around him. This is an antique 1930s Royal Arms Brand crate label from the Lake Wales Citrus Growers Association of Lake Wales, Polk County, Florida, and never pasted on a box.

As the supply of originals dwindles, these Americana advertising images get copied for magnets, prints, posters, etc... Why not own the original label that started it all while you can?

🔍 What's on it

Royal and Arms in huge red script shadowed in yellow, with BRAND in small type beneath. On the left, the warrior: a silver helmet with a white plume, a bare chest crossed with armor straps, a dark kilt, tall steel greaves, a sword held low, and a tall orange shield with a white rampant lion on a red field. Yellow fleurs-de-lis are scattered across the green. Along the bottom, LAKE WALES and CITRUS GROWERS ASSOCIATION in yellow, Lake Wales and Polk County, Florida in pale blue script, and U.S.A. at the bottom center. There is a tiny printer's line at the lower right too small to read. The back is plain, with Royal Arms showing faintly through in reverse.

👑 A royal family of labels from a town called Wales

The Lake Wales growers loved a royal name. Royal Arms sits in a family with their Royal Guard, Prince of Wales and Crown Jewel brands, and I think that's no accident for a town called Lake Wales, which even calls itself the Crown Jewel of the Ridge. The label came in more than one colorway, too: the Museum of Florida History keeps both a gray version and this green one in its citrus label collection, and the Lakeland Public Library has this green one in its collection as well.

The Lake Wales Citrus Growers Association has been around since 1919, by its cooperative's own account, and it is still going. It's a member of Florida's Natural, the growers' cooperative that started out in 1933 as the Florida Citrus Canners Cooperative, and in 1999 the Lake Wales and Winter Haven associations joined up with the Dundee Citrus Growers Association.

🌴 Lake Wales and the Singing Tower

Lake Wales sits up on the Lake Wales Ridge in Polk County, right in the middle of Florida's citrus country. It was incorporated as a town in May of 1917 and became a city in 1925. Funny thing about the name: the lake itself is still spelled Lake Wailes, after Sidney Irving Wailes, the surveyor who worked there in 1879, and somewhere along the way the town dropped the i.

The town's big landmark is Bok Tower. Edward Bok and his wife Mary Louise Curtis Bok created the gardens in the 1920s on Iron Mountain, one of the highest points in peninsular Florida, with grounds laid out by Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. and a 205-foot Singing Tower designed by Milton B. Medary, holding a 60-bell carillon cast in Loughborough, England. President Calvin Coolidge dedicated the tower on February 1, 1929, and the gardens are a National Historic Landmark today. Picture the groves all around that tower with boxes of Royal Arms citrus stacked up at the packing house!

🏡 Display

Imagine hanging this antique advertising on your wall as home decor in any room! That warrior looks great framed in a den, a game room or a kitchen, and it's a perfect gift for a history buff, a Florida citrus family, or anybody from Lake Wales or Polk County, Florida.

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.