Antique 1920s Ana Co Export Crate Label – ANACO, San Francisco

Size: 10 x 9 inches ~ Light wear and strong original color. They vary a little one to the next.

🦘 What's on the Label

An emu on one side, a kangaroo on the other, both facing a big gold sunrise on a deep blue ground, the whole thing framed in a lime-green border. Under the animals, ANA CO BRAND and TRADE MARK in red-outlined letters, then a dark panel stamped GRAPE FRUIT in gold. I like these - the two animals and the sunrise aren't just decoration, they're a straight nod to where the company's name comes from.

🌏 The Australian New Zealand American Trading Company

ANA CO is short for the Australian New Zealand American Trading Company, spelled out in full under the animals along with SHIPPERS and FRONT ST. SAN FRANCISCO, U.S.A. That's not just label copy - the firm really was there. San Francisco's business filings show it as a partnership between Patrick Duffy and Harold Moore, filed in March 1924, and it kept a Front Street address in the city directories from 1924 into the 1940s. By the late 1920s, the Watsonville papers were calling it one of the largest importing and exporting concerns on the whole Pacific coast.

🍏 Pat Duffy and the Pajaro Valley Apple Trade

Patrick Duffy ran the company as its president, and he's well documented locally. He'd started buying apples out of the Pajaro Valley around 1901, and by 1928 he was the biggest buyer of export apples in the whole valley, moving more than 150 carloads out of the district that year. The company packed its export apples as the "Anaco Brand," and Duffy hosted barbecues for the local growers and packers in Watsonville in December of both 1927 and 1928, with the meat shipped in from Australia - a nice touch for a company named after that trade. The company put the ANA CO name on more than apples, and this is its grapefruit label.

🖨️ Printed by Olsen Litho

Down in the corner, in tiny type, the label carries its printer's mark: OLSEN LITHO. CO. S.F. Olsen's was a real San Francisco lithography shop, listed in the city directories printing labels and cartons through the 1920s, and shown consolidated with the Traung Label & Lithograph Co. by 1928. Between the partnership's 1924 start, the Front Street address that ran into the 1940s, and the Olsen Litho name itself, these labels belong to the 1920s - solidly Antique by any accounting, and one of my favorite pieces of crate art for the story behind it.