Vintage 1970s Progress Brand California Asparagus Crate Label 🌿 Bilingual, R&J Packing Sales, Lodi CA

Who Packed Progress Brand Asparagus in Lodi? 🌉 PROGRESS California Asparagus, R&J Packing & Sales Co., Lodi, California

Size: 9 1/2" x 9 1/2" ~ little to no wear.

This one's a San Francisco postcard on a crate label. You're standing under the Bay Bridge looking across the water at the city, with the Ferry Building clock tower and the then-new Transamerica Pyramid poking up out of a golden skyline, a big white cruise ship gliding past, and PROGRESS in huge red letters across the sky. Down below, CALIFORNIA ASPARAGUS rides on a yellow ribbon banner over the deep blue bay.

🏷️ Every Word on the Label

• PROGRESS
• CALIFORNIA ASPARAGUS
• EXCLUSIVE DISTRIBUTORS, the R&J diamond, PACKING & SALES CO. INC., LODI, CALIFORNIA 95240
• NET WT. 30 LBS, POIDS NET 13.61 kg
• PRODUCE OF U.S.A., PRODUIT DES ÉTATS-UNIS

The back is blank, with ASPARAGUS showing through faintly in reverse. Notice the French and the kilograms. That fits a box bound for Canada, where bilingual labels and metric weights came into the rules in the 1970s.

🏙️ A Skyline That Dates Itself

That pointed tower in the skyline is the Transamerica Pyramid, and construction on it only began in 1969, finishing in 1972, so this artwork can't be any older than that. The 245-foot clock tower on the waterfront is the Ferry Building, opened on July 13, 1898, which was once the second busiest transit terminal in the world after London's Charing Cross, until the bridges opened in the 1930s and the ferries faded. The Bay Bridge itself opened on November 12, 1936, when Governor Merriam cut a gold chain with an acetylene torch and set off the greatest traffic jam in the history of San Francisco. The double suspension spans you're looking up at were the second and third largest suspension bridges in the world at the time.

🍇 The Graffigna Brothers of Lodi

R&J was a Lodi outfit. In the late 1960s John Graffigna and his brother Ralph formed R&J Packing Company, and they packed and shipped grapes, asparagus, apples, pears and cherries. They farmed 1,000 acres, were Lodi's largest Tokay grape growers, and in the 1970s R&J was one of the largest cherry shippers in the state. The brothers ran the business together until Ralph died in 1982, and in 2016 John, a second-generation wine grape grower, was inducted into the San Joaquin County Agricultural Hall of Fame. The ZIP code puts this printing after 1963, the skyline puts it after 1969, and the bilingual lines fit the 1970s, when R&J was at its busiest.

📐 Asparagus Crates

Asparagus was shipped standing up in tapered wooden crates, wider at the base like the spears themselves, and as crate label historian Jeff Willett explains, the labels were cut to match. Labels like this one went on the end of 30-pound boxes of California asparagus.

🖼️ 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. Nobody is ever going to print these again. The supply for sale is all there is, and once it is framed on collectors' walls and tucked into gallery collections, these labels will be very hard to come by.

Imagine this amazing vintage advertising hanging as home decor in any room of your home instead of a museum!