Vintage 1980s London Keana Rose Syrup Label Collectible

🌹 A Rose From Blackstock Road

This label never made it onto a bottle. Printed for Keana Rose Flavoured Syrup by Keana Co. of 116 Blackstock Road, London N4, it carries one of the boldest roses ever put on a grocery label: a coral-red bloom in a black oval that jumps off a chartreuse and lavender ground. The artwork has since been copied onto poster prints sold as wall decor. This is an original printed label, unused, 4 1/2" x 3 1/2" ~.

What Is Printed on It

A tall paper label printed in full color. Across the top in dark green is KEANA®, with ROSE FLAVOURED SYRUP curving beneath it. In the center a coral-red rose with green leaves sits on a black ground, framed by a twisting brown vine with orange highlights that wraps the whole label and sprouts leaves at the corners. The lower half turns lavender. On the left: CONTENTS 720 ml ℮. On the right: BEST BEFORE END, with no date filled in. Along the bottom:

Ingredients: Sugar, Water, Flavour, Malic Acid, Stabiliser (E466), Preservative (E211), Colours (E122, E142).

A small red rosebud sits in the lower right corner, and the last line reads KEANA CO. 116 BLACKSTOCK ROAD, LONDON N4. The back is blank.

Reading the Fine Print Like a Date Stamp

Every line of small print on this label is there because a law asked for it, and those laws date it. Until 1980 British law did not require food to carry any date at all. The Food Labelling Regulations 1980 brought UK law into line with the 1979 EC labelling directive, 79/112/EEC, which required a date of minimum durability: the best-before date. The ingredient list names each additive by its job and its E number, Stabiliser (E466), Preservative (E211), Colours (E122, E142), the category-and-number format set out in the schedules of the Food Labelling Regulations 1984, which came into operation on 19 September 1984. The little ℮ beside 720 ml is the European estimated sign, from EEC directives of 1974 and 1976, which lets a pack be sold across member states without re-checking its fill. A label carrying all three was printed in the 1980s or later.

E122, E211 and the Southampton Six

Two ingredients on this little rose label had a future nobody saw coming. E122 is carmoisine, a red azo food colour, and E211 is the preservative sodium benzoate. In September 2007 The Lancet published a study from the University of Southampton, by Jim Stevenson, Donna McCann, Edmund Sonuga-Barke and John Warner, which found that mixtures of six artificial colours, carmoisine among them, together with sodium benzoate, were linked to increased hyperactivity in some children. On 10 April 2008 the Food Standards Agency recommended to ministers that the six colours be phased out of food and drink and asked manufacturers to remove them voluntarily. The study led to a warning label: from 20 July 2010, food and drink still containing any of the "Southampton six" had to say the colour may have effects on activity and attention in children. Carmoisine is listed as banned in the United States, Canada, Japan and Norway.

Blackstock Road, London N4

Keana Co. gave its address as 116 Blackstock Road. The road runs from Seven Sisters Road south-west to Highbury in north London, near Finsbury Park and Arsenal stations. It began as a dirt track called Boarded River Lane, after a 462-foot wooden aqueduct that carried the New River over the shallow valley of Highbury Vale and Hackney Brook; the New River was put into a pipeline alongside Green Lanes in 1866. At the Peace News offices on the road in 1958, artist Gerald Holtom first unveiled his symbol for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. The northern end, full of Algerian cafés, is known as Little Algiers, and in November 2025 Time Out named Blackstock Road among the coolest streets in Europe.

The Rose in the Glass: The Lore of an Old Drink

Rose syrup is a far older idea than any London label. Rose water most likely began in Persia, where it is called golab, from gol, rose, and ab, water. Legend gives the credit for distilling it to Ibn Sina, the Bukharan-born physician known in the West as Avicenna, who lived from 980 to 1037 and worked out how to use the still to draw the essence out of flower petals. Add sugar to rose water and you have rose syrup. Sharbat, the sweet syrup drinks of Persia seasoned with roses, sandalwood and hibiscus, are first mentioned in a 12th-century Persian medical encyclopedia, the Zakhireye Khwarazmshahi. Rose still flavors laddu, gulab jamun and peda in South Asia, Turkish delight and baklava in the Middle East, and a red rose cordial called sirap mawar in Southeast Asia, and Iran today supplies around 90 percent of the world's rose water.

A Label Worth Framing

That rose has been reproduced as poster art, but posters are copies. This is the kind of original label they were made from, printed to go on a real bottle of rose syrup sold out of north London, and never used. They aren't making any more of them.

Questions People Ask

How old is the Keana Rose Flavoured Syrup label?

It dates to the 1980s or later. Its BEST BEFORE END line and its E-number ingredient list follow British food labelling law first brought in during 1980 and 1984.

What is E122?

Carmoisine, a red food colour and one of the six colours in the 2007 Southampton hyperactivity study.

Where was Keana Co.?

At 116 Blackstock Road, London N4, between Finsbury Park and Highbury.

How big is the label?

Four and a half inches tall by three and a half wide.

Has it been used?

No. It was never put on a bottle, and the back is clean and blank.

How much syrup did the bottle hold?

720 ml, as printed on the label.