Antique 1930s Jolly Roger Crate Label Waverly 🍊 FL, Pirate Nautical Decor

Who Packed Jolly Roger Citrus? 🏴‍☠️ Jolly Roger Brand Crate Label, Waverly Growers Cooperative of Waverly, Florida

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

A swaggering pirate in a tricorn hat and a flowing red cape stands on the shore with a long musket over his shoulder, a pistol and a sword at his belt and sandals on his feet, while his three-masted ship rides at anchor out in the cove behind him. Jolly Roger is spelled out in tall pale-blue letters on a deep blue ground, and the whole square label has its corners clipped the way the old Florida labels were.

🏷️ What's Printed on It

• Jolly Roger BRAND
• WAVERLY GROWERS COOPERATIVE, WAVERLY, FLA.
• BRANDAU-CRAIG-DICKERSON CO., the printer's line in tiny type at the lower right

The back is blank.

🍊 Waverly Growers Cooperative

Waverly sits along U.S. 27 between Lake Wales and Dundee in Polk County, right in the heart of Florida citrus country. A group of local growers led by Charles Hillery Walker and a Danish immigrant named W.L. Pedersen founded the Waverly Citrus Growers' Association there in 1914, and in 1936 they changed the name to Waverly Growers Cooperative, the name on this label.

They grew into a big operation. One of the co-op's own brochures says its production department cared for about 7,000 acres of groves, handling the fertilizing, spraying, irrigating, picking, trimming, clearing and replanting for its members. The packing house could prepare and pack 6,000 standard boxes every 8-hour working day, over two million boxes a year, and Waverly employed about 465 people, sixteen of whom had been there more than 25 years each. There was even a Waverly Welcome House, "The Show Window of Waverly Growers," with a formal garden and shaded picnic grounds, sitting on the beaten track between Cypress Gardens and Bok Singing Tower on Route 540, part of the famous Orange Blossom Trail. A plaque in the garden honored W.L. Pedersen, 1864 to 1950.

🏴‍☠️ Why "Jolly Roger"

The name for the pirate flag goes back at least to Charles Johnson's A General History of the Pyrates, published in Britain in 1724, which says Bartholomew Roberts called his flag the Jolly Roger in June 1721 and Francis Spriggs did too in December 1723. The skull and crossbones got going in the 1710s and became the most common pirate flag of the 1720s.

🖨️ Brandau-Craig-Dickerson of Nashville

The printer's line belongs to Brandau-Craig-Dickerson Co. of Nashville, Tennessee, one of the big printers of Florida citrus labels, whose name also turns up on picture postcards from the same years.

🖼️ Display

Crate Labels are a reminder of a bygone era but the amazing lithography process 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 these out to preserve their history. Once the limited supply for sale is gone and on display with collectors or in galleries then they will be very difficult to acquire.

Imagine this amazing vintage advertising hanging as home decor in any room of your home instead of a museum!