Antique 1920s Foodland Evaporated Milk Label 🐄 Cleveland Ohio Farmhouse Art

What Was on the Grocery Shelf? 🐄 Antique Foodland Evaporated Milk Label, Cleveland Ohio

Size: 9 3/4" x 3 1/2"

🐄 A black-and-white Holstein standing in a green pasture under a soft blue sky, and FOODLAND in big black letters on a gold band. It's a can label for Foodland Evaporated Milk from Foodland Inc., distributors, of Cleveland, Ohio, and it never made it onto a can.

🔍 What's On It

The front panel has READ BACK PANEL over the cow, then FOODLAND, EVAPORATED MILK in red, and NET WEIGHT 14½ OZ. AVOIR. LIQUID MEAS. 13 OZS. The back panel sits in a gold stepped frame: FOODLAND, TRADE MARK REG., Size of can Tall Milk, and a whole little lesson in the fine print. It explains that Foodland Brand Evaporated Milk is whole cow's milk with half the water taken out, sterile in the unopened can, and that one part water to one part milk gives you milk up to the legal standard. Then the directions: COOKING, FOR DRINKING, and BABY FEEDING, "especially suitable for babies and children. Consult your Doctor for proper Formula." It ends with "Keep in cool dry place until opened. Then treat the same as you would bottled milk," over FOODLAND INC., DISTRIBUTORS, CLEVELAND, OHIO. Up the right edge is the number C-1373. The back of the paper is blank.

🥛 Milk in a Can

That baby feeding line is a real piece of history. For a long stretch of the last century, evaporated milk went into a lot of homemade baby formula, and clinical studies back then found babies thrived on it. It was also milk you could keep on the shelf without refrigeration, which is why so many pantries had a few tall cans.

The unsweetened kind goes back to John B. Meyenberg, who had worked at a milk condensery in Cham, Switzerland, and worked out how to keep milk without adding sugar by heating it in a sealed can. He got his U.S. patents on November 25, 1884, and the next February he and some farmers and businessmen in Highland, Illinois, started the Helvetia Milk Condensing Company. Their "Our Pet" brand became the best seller, and in 1923 the company renamed itself the PET Milk Company. Grocers and distributors put their own brands on the tall can too, and Foodland was one of them, out of Cleveland.

📏 Details

• Antique Foodland Evaporated Milk can label, Holstein cow in a pasture
• Foodland Inc., Distributors, Cleveland, Ohio; Tall Milk size, 14½ oz.
• Full back panel with cooking, drinking and baby feeding directions; C-1373
• About 9 3/4" x 3 1/2", unused, New Old Stock
• You'll get one label like the ones shown

🖼️ Frame it over a coffee bar, in a pantry or a farmhouse kitchen, or next to an old milk bottle and a cream can. It's a natural for anybody from Cleveland.