Vintage Ilene Brand Sweet Potato Crate Label 🍠 1940s Lafayette Louisiana Porto Rican Yams, Sam Gothelf

Size: 9 x 9 inches

🍠 A Lafayette Yam Label with a Woman's Name

This one is pure Louisiana. Against a light-blue field, the brand name "ILENE" stands in bold red block capitals outlined in gold, with "Brand" beneath. Below it, on a deep-blue shield edged in a scalloped red-and-yellow border, four plump sweet potatoes glow golden-orange, painted so warmly you can almost feel their weight; around them run the words "Louisiana Porto Rican Sweet Potatoes — Hand Selected, Hand Packed," and at the base, "Packed by Sam Gothelf, Lafayette, La." Down in the corners sit the workaday details of a real produce crate: "50 lbs. Net When Packed" and the government grade, "U.S. No. 2." It is an Ilene brand sweet potato label, and it comes straight out of Acadiana. Everything described here comes straight from the label in the photographs; the history is what can honestly be established — and, honestly, part of it is a gap.

🏢 Sam Gothelf, Lafayette, Louisiana

The label names its own packer plainly: "Packed by Sam Gothelf, Lafayette, La." Sam Gothelf was a produce packer and shipper in Lafayette, in the heart of Louisiana's Acadiana country, who sent the region's sweet potatoes to market under the Ilene brand. And here is the honest part, told plainly rather than papered over: the documented record of this particular packer is thin. Unlike the big California cooperatives, Sam Gothelf is a name the history books have largely passed by, and the label itself is now one of the main surviving traces of the business. Whether "Ilene" was a wife, a daughter or a sweetheart, the paper does not say — but naming a brand after a woman in the family was a common, affectionate habit among small produce packers, and it gives this label a warm, personal ring that the big anonymous brands never had.

That honest gap is itself part of the story. For every large shipper whose ledgers sit in an archive, there were dozens of local packers like Sam Gothelf who simply did the work season after season and left little behind but the brands they printed. This Ilene label is a small piece of primary evidence that the business existed, packed Louisiana sweet potatoes by hand, and cared enough to dress them in a design this handsome.

The product itself has a genuinely proud Louisiana history. "Louisiana Porto Rican" names the Porto Rico sweet potato — a moist, orange-fleshed variety that dominated the American sweet-potato market from the 1930s through the 1950s and effectively built Louisiana's sweet-potato industry. It was Louisiana growers who, in 1937, coined the marketing term "yam" to set their moist, sweet, orange-fleshed potatoes apart from the drier, pale kinds grown elsewhere — which is why a Louisiana sweet potato of this era is so often, and so proudly, called a yam. So "Louisiana Porto Rican" on this label is not a throwaway line; it is the very variety and the very moment that made the state a sweet-potato power.

🎨 The Label's Hidden Pedigree: Walle & Co.

There is a fine name hiding in tiny type at the very bottom of the label: "Walle & Co. Inc., N.O., La." That is Walle & Company of New Orleans — and it is a genuinely storied printing house. Founded in New Orleans in 1872, Walle grew into one of the city's biggest printers, turning out labels for tea, coffee, beer, seafood, vegetables and hot sauce, and — wonderfully — also designing and printing the invitations and parade bulletins for the old Carnival krewes, Rex and Comus and Proteus among them. So this humble yam label was printed by the same house that dressed Mardi Gras. That is exactly the kind of quiet, real pedigree these little labels so often carry once you look closely.

📦 Genuinely Old, Never Used

A word on why a label this old still looks so clean: it was never used. American produce moved in nailed wooden crates that each wanted a pasted paper label, so packers ordered them in quantity. When the pre-printed cardboard carton replaced the wooden crate, the paper labels became obsolete, and surplus stock was set aside and forgotten in storerooms. This Ilene label is one of those unused survivors: never pasted, its back a clean blank, its front as fresh as the day it was printed. The old "Porto Rican" spelling, the hand-selected/hand-packed language and the Walle imprint all sit comfortably in the 1940s, and it is offered as a circa-1940s label; no single exact year is stamped on it, and none is claimed.

🔍 An Honest Look at Condition

Read from the same photographs you can see: this is a single sheet of original vintage lithographed paper, unused, with a clean blank reverse — the sure sign it was never applied to a crate. The printed front is warm and bright, the red lettering strong, the blue shield deep, the golden sweet potatoes glowing. It shows the light, honest character of stored vintage paper and is offered exactly as pictured, with nothing added, retouched or hidden. As a flat, roughly square paper label it frames cleanly and without bulk.

🖼️ How to Live With It

A label this handsome, and this specific to real Louisiana ground, is made to be seen:

• 🍠 Frame it as warm kitchen art — the glowing sweet potatoes and bold red lettering are a natural over a stove, a sink or a farmhouse table.
• 🍛 Bring it out for the holidays — a genuine vintage Louisiana yam label is a perfect, rooted note for a Thanksgiving or harvest table setting.
• 🌴 Give a Lafayette or Acadiana connection a keepsake — a real local packer's label is a specific piece of home.
• 🥗 Build a produce-label cluster with other vegetable and fruit labels for a wall that celebrates the golden age of package art.
• 🎁 Use it as an affordable, genuinely-vintage gift for a cook, a gardener or a lover of Southern history.

🎁 Who This Is For

This label speaks to several kinds of people. The crate-label collector values a bold, packer-attributed Southern sweet-potato label — a less common regional field than the California output — and one with a named lithographer as fine as Walle. The lover of Louisiana and Acadiana history finds a real thread of the state's proud sweet-potato story. The cook or gardener enjoys those beautifully painted yams. And anyone with roots in Lafayette finds a specific piece of home in the packer's name. For each of them, this is a single original label, offered exactly as shown.

❓ Questions Worth Answering

Who was Sam Gothelf?

A produce packer and shipper in Lafayette, Louisiana, named right on the label, who shipped the region's sweet potatoes under the Ilene brand. Detailed history of the firm is scarce today — the label is one of its main surviving traces — and that honest gap is part of the piece's story.

What are "Louisiana Porto Rican" sweet potatoes?

The Porto Rico sweet potato, a moist orange-fleshed variety that dominated the U.S. market from the 1930s to the 1950s and built Louisiana's sweet-potato industry. Louisiana growers coined the marketing term "yam" in 1937 for exactly this kind of potato.

Who printed it?

Walle & Co. of New Orleans, credited in tiny type at the base — a storied printing house founded in 1872 that also printed for the Mardi Gras Carnival krewes.

Is it original or a reproduction?

An original vintage lithographed crate label, not a reprint. The clean blank reverse and the character of the paper are consistent with genuine unused new-old-stock.

What condition is it in?

Unused, with a clean blank back and a warm, bright printed front, showing only the light honest character of stored vintage paper. Offered exactly as pictured.

📦 How a Label Like This Was Used

It helps to picture the label doing its original job. Sam Gothelf's crew hand-selected and hand-packed the region's sweet potatoes in the Lafayette packing house, filled the sturdy wooden crates, and pasted a paper label just like this one to the end panel of each. Stacked in a rail car or a market, those panels faced outward — so this handsome shield of golden yams was quite literally the face the crop wore on its journey out of Acadiana. The bold brand word and the mouth-watering central image were chosen for exactly that job: to stop a buyer's eye and promise quality, read and remembered in a glance. An unused survivor like this one preserves that whole intention in mint state, the label never once having ridden the crate it was drawn for.

🖼️ A Word on Framing and Care

Because it is flat, light and unmounted, this label could not be simpler to live with. Its roughly square shape frames beautifully in a plain frame with a neutral mat, and the warm golden yams glow against almost any wall colour. As with all vintage paper, a few small courtesies keep it exactly as it is now: use acid-free framing materials, hang it out of direct sunlight to protect the strong reds and blues, and handle it by the edges. Given that ordinary care, this genuine circa-1940s Louisiana label will stay as warm for the next owner as it is today.

✨ Why It Matters

It is easy to walk past something this small, and that is exactly why it is worth stopping for. Here is a genuine trace of a real Lafayette business — Sam Gothelf, a Louisiana sweet-potato packer whose story history mostly forgot but whose Ilene brand still glows. He did his old job with pride: four hand-picked yams, a woman's name in red, printed by the same New Orleans house that dressed Mardi Gras, and preserved unused for the better part of a century. Frame it, gift it, or bring it out at harvest time. Either way you are keeping a small, warm, genuine piece of Louisiana's proud sweet-potato story — and giving a nearly-forgotten packing house one more season in the sun.

🏷️ What Is Printed on This Label

Read off the sheet itself, verbatim — this is the label's own printed text, not a description of it:

• ILENE
• BRAND
• LOUISIANA PORTO RICAN
• SWEET POTATOES
• HAND SELECTED
• HAND PACKED
• PACKED BY
• SAM GOTHELF
• LAFAYETTE, LA.
• 50 LBS. NET
• WHEN PACKED
• U.S. No. 2
• WALLE & Co. INC. N.O. LA.

The printer is on the object and it is not the packer. WALLE & Co. INC. N.O. LA. — the New Orleans house — is set in microtype centred in the pale-blue margin directly below the bottom point of the shield. Sam Gothelf is credited on the sheet only as PACKED BY.

Each red ILENE letter is backed by an offset navy drop-shadow block, a small piece of showing-off that no description had recorded. HAND SELECTED / HAND PACKED sits stacked at the left above the four painted sweet potatoes, not around them.

The grade and the weight sit outside the shield in the open margins: 50 LBS. NET / WHEN PACKED at lower left, and U.S. No. 2 set on a rising diagonal at lower right. There is no printed date on the sheet; the circa 1940s dating is stated as circa on every island already.