Antique 1931 Independent Brand Pear Crate Label 🔔 — Yakima Washington, Liberty Bell Patriotic Art

Size: 10 x 7 inches

🔔 Liberty on a Crate of Yakima Pears

This label wraps a box of Northwest fruit in the American founding itself. Dead center, cast in soft blue-green bronze and hung from its heavy wooden yoke, is the Liberty Bell — crack and all, the inscription curving around its crown — set against a warm cream ground, with a red banner sweeping across that reads "Northwest Pears" in flowing white script. Arched over the top in bold blue letters is the brand: "Independent." It is an Independent Brand pear label, distributed by the Washington Fruit & Produce Company of Yakima, Washington. Everything described here comes straight from the label in the photographs; the history below is what can honestly be established about the firm behind it.

🏢 The Washington Fruit & Produce Company of Yakima

The label names its own shipper plainly along the base: "Distributed by Washington Fruit & Produce Co., Yakima, Washington, U.S.A.," with "Produce of U.S.A." reading across the corners. And here is what lifts this one above the ordinary: the company behind it is not a vanished firm but one of the great survivors of the American fruit trade. The Washington Fruit & Produce Company was incorporated in 1916 by Fred B. Plath to grow, pack and ship apples, pears and peaches from the Yakima Valley — and it is still, more than a century later, a family-owned and operating Yakima business, one of the anchors of Washington's tree-fruit industry. This little pear label is a piece of that long, unbroken story, printed when the firm was already a going concern and still had the better part of a century ahead of it.

The setting is one of the most famous fruit districts on earth. The Yakima Valley, in south-central Washington, is high desert made green by irrigation — long, warm, sunny days and cool nights over volcanic soil, a climate that turned the valley into the heart of the Pacific Northwest apple and pear country. From the early twentieth century its packing houses graded and boxed fruit and shipped it by rail across the nation and around the world; "Northwest Pears," as this label proudly reads, were among its signature crops. The Washington Fruit & Produce Company was one of the valley's foundational shippers, and a brand like Independent was its signature in distant markets.

There is a quiet satisfaction in holding the trade dress of a company that is still in business. So many crate labels are the last trace of firms long gone; this one is a chapter from a story still being written, the early brand of a Yakima house that helped build an industry and never left it.

🖽️ Why "Independent," and Why the Liberty Bell

The brand and the image are perfectly matched. To call a brand "Independent" and then crown it with the Liberty Bell — the very bell rung, by tradition, for American independence — is to wrap a crate of pears in the whole language of liberty, self-reliance and national pride. For a firm competing against the big grower cooperatives, the name carried an extra wink: here was the fruit of an independent house, standing on its own. In a wholesale market a buyer's eye slid across dozens of stacked crates in seconds, and a brand lived or died on whether its label could stop that eye — and few American symbols command instant recognition and goodwill like the Liberty Bell. It is patriotic salesmanship of the most confident kind, and it still reads clearly today.

🍐 What the Label Shows

The design is clean, bold and instantly legible. A warm cream ground fills the sheet, bordered by a fine dark rule. At the top, "Independent" arches in tall blue block letters with a paler blue shadow, "Brand" tucked beneath. The center is dominated by the Liberty Bell in cool blue-green, hung from a grained wooden yoke with iron bolts, its famous crack running down the face and the raised inscription curving around its crown. A red banner edged in yellow and green sweeps across the middle with "Northwest Pears" in white script, and the base carries the distributor line, "Washington Fruit & Produce Co., Yakima, Washington," flanked by "Produce of U.S.A." The corners note "Reg. U.S. Pat. Off." and "Contents 4/5 U.S. Bushel." It is a horizontal, landscape-format label, the proportion made for the end of a pear box.

📅 The Label Dates Itself: Copyright 1931

This is one of those satisfying cases where the paper settles its own age. Printed in small type at the foot of the design, between the words "Washington Fruit" and "& Produce Co.," is a copyright line: "Copyright 1931." The design was registered in 1931, so the label belongs to the early 1930s — a genuine pre-war fruit label, printed when Washington Fruit was already fifteen years established. It is worth noting plainly, because the piece has sometimes been loosely described as a 1940s label; the label's own printed copyright puts the design squarely in 1931, and that printed evidence is what this listing follows.

📦 Genuinely Old, Never Used

A quick word on why a label this old still looks freshly printed: it was never used. Northwest fruit travelled in nailed wooden boxes that each wanted a pasted paper label, so packers ordered them by the thousand and kept great stacks on hand. When pre-printed cardboard cartons took over — printing the brand straight onto the box — the paper labels became obsolete, and surplus stock was set aside and forgotten in storerooms. This Independent label is one of those survivors: never pasted, its reverse blank but for a soft ghost of the front bleeding through, its color as fresh as the day it was printed.

🔍 An Honest Look at Condition

Read from the same photographs: this is a single sheet of original vintage lithographed paper, unused, with a blank reverse showing only a faint mirror-image bleed-through of the front — exactly what an unused, never-pasted label should show. The printed face is clean and fresh, the cream ground bright, the bell finely modeled, the red banner and blue lettering strong. It shows the light, honest character of stored vintage paper and is offered exactly as pictured, with nothing added, retouched or concealed. As a flat paper label it frames cleanly and without bulk.

🖼️ How to Live With It

A label this handsome, and this rich in American symbolism, belongs on a wall:

• 🔔 Frame it as-is — the cream ground and blue Liberty Bell look striking in a simple frame, a natural for a kitchen, a study or an entryway.
• 🇺🇸 Lean into the patriotic theme and hang it with other Americana, flag or Fourth-of-July imagery.
• 🍐 Build a Northwest fruit-label wall, grouping it with other apple and pear labels for a crisp, orchard-fresh corner.
• 🏡 Give a Yakima Valley connection a keepsake — for anyone tied to Washington's fruit country, a genuine local shipper's label is a specific piece of home.
• 🎁 Use it as an affordable, genuinely-antique gift for a collector, a patriot or a lover of orchard history.

🎁 Who This Is For

Independent will mean the most to a few people. The crate-label collector values a clean, shipper-attributed Northwest pear label with a strong central emblem and a printed copyright date. The lover of Americana and patriotic imagery reads the Liberty Bell for the instantly-recognizable symbol it is. And the Washingtonian — anyone with a grandparent in the orchards or a childhood in the Yakima Valley — finds real local history in the name of a shipper still in business today. For any of them, this is a single original label, offered exactly as shown.

❓ Questions Worth Answering

Who was the Washington Fruit & Produce Company?

A Yakima, Washington grower, packer and shipper of tree fruit, incorporated in 1916 by Fred B. Plath to handle Yakima Valley apples, pears and peaches. Remarkably, it is still a family-owned and operating Yakima business more than a century later — one of the anchors of Washington's fruit industry.

Is the brand "Independent" or "Independence"?

The label reads "Independent Brand." (It has occasionally been listed under the name "Independence"; the label's own lettering reads Independent.) The crop is Northwest pears.

Is it original or a reproduction?

An original vintage lithographed label. The bleed-through-only reverse and paper character indicate genuine unused new-old-stock.

How old is it?

The design carries a printed "Copyright 1931," placing it in the early 1930s. That printed date is followed here rather than a looser later estimate.

What condition is it in?

Unused, with a clean blank back (bearing only a faint bleed-through) and a fresh, well-preserved face. Offered exactly as pictured.

✨ Why It Matters

It is easy to walk past something this small, and that is exactly why it is worth stopping for. Here is the early trade dress of a company that helped build an entire industry and is still at work today — the Washington Fruit & Produce Company of Yakima — wrapping a crate of Northwest pears in the Liberty Bell and the whole idea of American independence. Registered in 1931 and preserved unused ever since, it still rings clear. Frame it, gift it, or just prop it where the light lands. Either way you are keeping a bright, genuine piece of Yakima Valley fruit history — an independent house, a famous old bell, and a story that, unusually for these labels, is still being written.