Vintage Prince of Wales Crate Label 👑 from the 1950s

Who Packed Prince of Wales Citrus in Lake Wales? 👑 Prince of Wales Brand, Lake Wales Citrus Growers Association, Lake Wales, Florida

Size: 9" x 8 1/2" ~ Little to no wear.

Beautiful colors on this label from the Sunshine State! A dashing young courtier in a purple ermine-trimmed cloak, an orange doublet and green hose steps out onto a stage, plumed hat in one hand and a staff in the other, with a red velvet curtain pulled back and two pale columns behind him. This is a vintage 1950s Prince of Wales Brand crate label from the Lake Wales Citrus Growers Association of Lake Wales, Florida, and it was never pasted on a box. My pictures seriously don't do it justice.

🔍 What's on it

Prince of Wales in big orange script across a deep navy ground, with BRAND in small green type. In the middle, the stage scene inside a wide yellow ring lettered in red, LAKE WALES CITRUS GROWERS ASSOCIATION and LAKE WALES, FLORIDA. Down in the lower left, PRODUCE OF U.S.A. No printer is named. The back is plain, with the design showing faintly through.

🎭 Two princes

The Lake Wales growers ran Prince of Wales more than once. The Museum of Florida History keeps two different designs: an older one, which it dates to about 1935 to 1940, with a young clean-shaven prince in a blue ermine coat holding a sceptre, printed by the International Playing Card & Label Co. of Rogersville, Tennessee, and this one, with the moustached courtier on his stage, which it dates to about 1959 to 1960. The Lakeland Public Library has this same design in its collection too.

And the name is no accident, in my opinion. Prince of Wales was one of a whole royal family of brands from the Lake Wales growers, along with Royal Guard, Crown Jewel and Royal Arms, and it's a pretty good pun for a town called Wales. Lake Wales even calls itself the Crown Jewel of the Ridge. The funny part is that the lake itself is still spelled Lake Wailes, after Sidney Irving Wailes, the surveyor who worked there in 1879.

🍊 The Lake Wales growers

The Lake Wales Citrus Growers Association has been around since 1919, by its cooperative's own account, and it's still going as a member of Florida's Natural, the growers' cooperative that started out in 1933 as the Florida Citrus Canners Cooperative. In 1999 the Lake Wales and Winter Haven associations joined up with the Dundee Citrus Growers Association. Lake Wales itself was incorporated as a town in May of 1917, up on the Lake Wales Ridge in Polk County, right in the heart of Florida's citrus country.

🏡 Display

Imagine hanging this vintage advertising on your wall as home decor in any room! That stage scene looks great framed in a den, a theater room or a kitchen, and it's a perfect gift for an actor, a Shakespeare fan, anybody with Welsh roots, or anybody from Lake Wales and Polk County, Florida.

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.