Vintage 1950s Jay-Dee Crate Label 🍎 Los Angeles, San Francisco, CA, Bluejay Bird!

Who Was Jay-Dee? 🐦 Jay-dee Brand, John Demartini Co., Inc., Los Angeles and San Francisco

Size: 7" x 5" ~ Little to no wear.

A beautiful blue jay perched on a pine branch, framed in red, white and blue. The jay is the brand: Jay-dee, J. D., John Demartini! This is a vintage 1950s Jay-dee crate label from the John Demartini Co., Inc., growers, packers and shippers of Los Angeles and San Francisco, printed by the Louis Roesch Co. of San Francisco, and never used.

🔍 What's on it

ESTABLISHED 1878 across the top, and a big Jay-dee in golden-yellow script with the J swooping down the left side. In the middle, a window onto a blue jay with its crest up, sitting on a pine branch against a pale sky. Below, on a red band, JOHN DEMARTINI CO., INC., GROWERS, PACKERS AND SHIPPERS and LOS ANGELES AND SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA, then PRODUCE OF U.S.A. along the bottom of the deep blue border. In the lower corner in tiny type is the printer, LOUIS ROESCH CO., LITHO., S. F. CALIF. The back is plain, with the lettering showing faintly through.

🍅 The old San Francisco produce market

"Established 1878" makes this one of the old-line firms. In San Francisco the produce business lived in the old wholesale market next to the northern waterfront, a couple of dozen square blocks around Washington and Davis Streets. It was the heart of Italian San Francisco, run mostly by families from Genoa and from Ticino, the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland, and an old photograph of Oregon Street between Washington and Jackson shows the back of the DeMartini Co. building right there in the thick of it. A John DeMartini of San Francisco, a fruit and vegetable commission merchant, was also a director of the Bank of Italy, the bank that grew into the Bank of America. Same name, same trade, same town.

That market was famous enough to star in a movie: Jules Dassin's 1949 film noir Thieves' Highway, with Richard Conte, Valentina Cortese and Lee J. Cobb, was set in the produce district at Washington and Davis. Then in 1963 the whole market was torn down to make way for the Golden Gateway redevelopment, and the produce houses moved out.

🖨️ Louis Roesch Co.

Louis Roesch came to America from Stuttgart in 1872 and started his San Francisco lithography firm in 1879, printing labels and posters for California's farms and wineries. His son, Louis Roesch Jr., ran it until 1959, and the old Roesch building on Mission Street stood until 2011.

🏡 Display

Imagine hanging this vintage advertising on your wall as home decor in any room! That blue jay looks great framed in a kitchen or a den, and it's a perfect gift for a bird watcher, a San Francisco history buff, or anybody named DeMartini.

Crate labels are a reminder of a bygone era, and the lithography on them 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 them out to preserve their history. They aren't making any more vintage labels, obviously. Every one that goes up on a collector's wall is one fewer left for sale, and once this supply is gone, they will be very difficult to acquire.