Vintage 1960s Big City Brand California Bartlett Pears Crate Label 🌃 — Lambert Marketing Co., West Sacramento CA — Printed ZIP 95691

Remember Big City Pears? 🌃 Vintage 1960s Bartlett Pears Crate Label, Lambert Marketing Co.

Size: 10 1/2" x 7 1/2" ~ Little to no wear.

A 1960s Big City Bartlett Pears crate label from the Lambert Marketing Co. of West Sacramento, California, New Old Stock and never pasted on a crate.

And what a picture. A whole city skyline at dusk, towers and apartment blocks glowing with lit windows against a blazing orange sky, BIG CITY in giant blue letters over the top, and down in the corner a little yellow roundel of a show jumper in a hunt cap sailing over a rail fence with the words LEAPS AHEAD. City lights on a box of country pears. I love it.

🏷️ What's printed on it

• BIG CITY
• CALIFORNIA BARTLETT PEARS
• CONTENTS 4/5 BUSHEL
• LEAPS AHEAD (around the show-jumper roundel)
• PRODUCE OF U.S.A.
• LAMBERT MARKETING CO. (in a winged shield)
• MAIN OFFICE WEST SACRAMENTO CALIF. 95691
• LITHO. IN U.S.A. / SAN FRANCISCO (along the bottom edge)

📅 How old is it?

The address tells you. CALIF. 95691 is a five-digit ZIP code, and those began on July 1, 1963, so this printing is 1963 or later. Wood-crate labels were on their way out by then as cardboard cartons took over, but plainly they were still in use when this one was printed.

🍐 Lambert Marketing Company

Lambert Marketing Company was incorporated in California on January 12, 1931, under William A. Lambert, with R.V. Lambert as president, and the Big City brand was first used that same year. Despite the name, they really did pack fruit. The main office was in Sacramento and later across the river in West Sacramento, and they sourced Bartletts from growers in El Dorado County and around the state.

Big City wasn't their only brand. Lambert packed pears under Capital Pak, with the State Capitol on it, Gem for Placerville pears, B-Wise, Pioneer Special, and mountain Bartletts from Lake County and Mendocino, and Big City went on honeydew melons too. They had a packing house down in San Jose by 1936, and they were shipping Bartletts clear to Illinois by the summer of 1932. This label shows the company still going strong, and still at its West Sacramento office, into the 1960s.

🎨 The art

The artist didn't sign it, and all the label tells you is that it was lithographed in the U.S.A., in San Francisco. By the 1960s the fruit-label printers were running offset lithography, and you can see why growers still paid for it: that orange sky and those glowing windows jump right off the end of a crate, and a show jumper promising the fruit "leaps ahead" makes it one of the most fun pear labels out there.

🏡 Display

Imagine hanging this vintage advertising on your wall as home decor in any room! It looks great framed in a kitchen, a city apartment, or next to its sister label, Capital Pak, for a little Lambert Marketing set.

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. This is a finite supply, and nobody is printing more. Once these labels are gone to collectors' walls and gallery collections, getting one will be very difficult.