Vintage 1940s Denison's Crest Washington Pears Crate Label 🍐 — Wenatchee WA, Thistle and Lamp Crest

Who Packed Denison's Crest Pears? 🍐 Vintage 1940s Washington Pears Crate Label, Wenatchee WA

Size: 10" x 9"

🍐 Denison's Crest Washington Pears

A coat of arms on a box of pears! This is a vintage 1940s Denison's Crest crate label, distributed by H.S. Denison & Co. of Wenatchee, Washington, and it went on wooden boxes of Washington pears. Never pasted on a box.

🔍 What's on it

Denison's in orange script arching over a big orange blackletter Crest, on a deep royal-blue ground. In the corner, the crest itself: a purple thistle rising out of a red-and-white wreath, over a shield split corner to corner, with a red apple on light blue on top and a brass oil lamp on green below, and a ribbon underneath reading QUALITY AND SERVICE. Down at the bottom, DISTRIBUTED BY H.S. DENISON & CO., WENATCHEE, WASHINGTON, PRODUCE OF U.S.A., and in the other corner WASHINGTON PEARS. The back is plain.

It's a fun bit of made-up heraldry: the Scottish thistle up top, the apple of the orchard country, and the old lamp of learning, all to say "Quality and Service." H.S. Denison & Co. also shipped Wenatchee apples under its Redman brand.

🌄 Wenatchee, the Apple Capital

Wenatchee sits where the Wenatchee River meets the Columbia, and it takes its name from the Wenatchi people who lived there first. The meaning has been told many ways: "Great Opening Out of the Mountain," "River Issuing from the Canyon," and in the old legends, "Place of the Rainbow," "Meeting of the Rivers" and "Good Place."

Philip Miller planted the first apple trees there in 1872, and the Peterson orchard of 1884 was the first commercial one. When the Great Northern Railway came over Stevens Pass in 1893, Wenatchee fruit could finally get out by rail. The first carload of apples went to Seattle in 1901, and by 1902 the town was already calling itself the "Apple Capital of the World." The boosters of the Wenatchee Commercial Club went further, selling the valley as "The Home of the Big Red Apple, Where Dollars Grow on Trees." Washington's Apple Blossom Festival has been held in Wenatchee every spring since 1920. Apples got the headlines, but the valley grew plenty of pears too, and a label like this one was how a shipper like Denison put its name on them.

Washington State University's special collections have a Denison's Crest label in their fruit label collection, dated to about 1947. Wenatchee itself was platted in September 1888 and incorporated on January 7, 1893.

🏡 Display

H.S. Denison is a very popular company for its crate labels, and many of them are reproduced as posters and wall art. I don't know about you, but I would rather have the real collectible as decor.

Imagine hanging this vintage advertising on your wall as home decor in any room! That royal blue and orange looks great framed in a kitchen, and it's a perfect gift for anybody from Wenatchee or the Washington fruit country.

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. Once the limited supply for sale is gone and on display with collectors or in galleries, they will be very difficult to acquire.