Vintage California State Pride Melon Label 🍈 from 1940s Fresno

Who Packed State Pride Melons? 🍈 State Pride Melon Label, Mosesian & Sons, Fresno, California

Size: 3 1/4" x 1" ~ Little to no wear.

Small but mighty! This is a vintage 1940s State Pride melon label from the Mosesian family of Fresno, California. A shiny gold-foil map of California sits right in the middle on a deep red ground, with two dark blue-green ribbon banners curling around it reading STATE and PRIDE, and the whole little label is edged in gold foil. It's only 3 1/4 inches long, and that's the point.

These labels were applied to enormous melons instead of crates as the size limited that, but this practice also served to differentiate between iconic brands. My pictures seriously don't do it justice.

🏷️ What's Printed on It

• PAUL A MOSESIAN & SONS INC
• MAIN OFFICE FRESNO, CAL
• STATE PRIDE BRAND
• FULL RIPE CALIFORNIA MELONS

🍇 Paul Mosesian, from Harpoot to Fresno

The man behind this label has a story worth telling. Paul Agop Mosesian was born on March 21, 1871 at Bazmashen, near Harpoot in the Armenian highlands of what was then Ottoman Turkey. In 1887, when he was just sixteen, he came to America and went to work in a shoe factory in Lynn, Massachusetts for 50 cents a day, and worked his way up to head leather cutter at $40 a week.

When the Klondike gold rush broke in 1898, he and his friend Markar Shahbazian headed north together. They had plenty of adventure and found very little gold, and when they got back to San Francisco they had $307 between them. Hearing about Fresno, they came down and rented a fig orchard at Del Rey together, and did well at it. Next they leased land for Muscat grapes near Parlier and eventually bought it for $12,000.

From there Paul Mosesian became one of Fresno's leading growers. In 1913 he helped organize the California Associated Raisin company, and he developed two brands of fruit of his own, "State Center" and "State Pride," which, as his biography puts it, always sold at a premium. So this is his own brand. In 1922 he incorporated his big properties in Fresno and Tulare counties under the family name printed right on this label. Sadly, he was hurt in an automobile accident on April 6, 1929 and died five days later, but his sons carried the business and the State Pride name on.

🏡 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! A tiny label like this looks great in a small frame or a shadow box, and it's a perfect gift for anybody from Fresno, any California melon lover, or anybody with Armenian roots in the Valley.