Vintage 1940s Talk O’ The Town Emperor Grapes Crate Label from Ivanhoe, California

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This 1940s Talk O’ The Town Emperor Grapes crate label was packed and shipped by W. D. Winton & Son of Ivanhoe, Tulare County, California. Measuring 13" × 4", it represents mid‑century California grape packaging in an elongated strip format.

The label remains New Old Stock, unused and unmounted, with no wear.

Elongated strip crate labels were commonly used for side‑panel branding on grape crates and are valued for their bold graphic presence when preserved unused. This example is well suited for collectors of California agricultural history and crate label art.

📋 What Is Printed On This Label

Every line of type on the sheet, transcribed from the label itself rather than paraphrased:

• TALK O' THE TOWN
• NET WEIGHT 28 LBS.
• EMPERORS
• W. D. WINTON & SON
• IVANHOE, CALIFORNIA

Printer: a lithographer's imprint is physically present on this sheet, but it is set in microtype below what the photographs resolve. It is left unread rather than guessed at — a flat re-scan of that corner would settle it.

The sheet prints EMPERORS, not "Emperor grapes". Emperor is a late-season California table grape; the word grapes is not printed anywhere on the label. NET WEIGHT 28 LBS. is set in small pale capitals directly above the EMPERORS panel.

The whole design is an electric sign. The shipper lines — W. D. WINTON & SON and IVANHOE, CALIFORNIA — are each spelled out in rows of pale-blue light-bulb dots, as though wired in neon, and the EMPERORS panel is ringed with yellow theatre-marquee bulbs. The brand name is the marquee.

The picture. A night-time city under a flat unbroken indigo sky — no stars — with a dense skyline of towers, a canyon-like avenue running back into the centre lit acid-yellow, streetcars, automobiles, street lamps and pedestrians in silhouette, and a domed civic building at the far right.

No BRAND word and no PRODUCE OF U.S.A. on this sheet — unusual for the period and worth stating as a positive absence. A line of microtype rides the light-blue inner rule at the extreme bottom left and is almost certainly a lithographer's imprint, but it cannot be read at photographic resolution and is not guessed at here.