Vintage 1940s Rita-Anne Brand Florida Citrus Fruit Crate Label 🍊 Lake Region Packing Assn., Tavares FL

Who Packed Rita-Anne Brand Citrus in Tavares? 🍊 Rita-Anne Brand Florida Citrus Fruit, Lake Region Packing Assn. of Tavares

Size: 6 3/4" x 3" ~ Very minor edge wear would never notice on display but please see the pictures and judge for yourself.

Another timeless beauty. A smiling dark-haired girl with rolled curls, a dark jacket, a white pointed collar and a little string of beads looks out from a chrome-yellow circle at the left, and RITA-ANNE runs across a deep navy strip in big cream letters, with Florida Citrus Fruit in yellow script underneath. My pictures seriously don't do it justice.

🏷️ What's Printed on It

• RITA-ANNE BRAND
• Florida Citrus Fruit
• LAKE REGION PACKING ASSN.
• TAVARES ★ FLORIDA

Her portrait is a real photograph, printed in halftone in warm orange and brown, and with those rolled curls and squared shoulders she's every bit a 1940s girl. The back is blank.

🏭 Lake Region Packing Association

Lake Region got going in Tavares in 1909, the same year the Florida Citrus Exchange was organized and co-ops sprang up at Haines City, Winter Haven, Clermont and Umatilla. Its packing house was built right on the shore of Lake Dora. In 1926 they hired Jennings Bryan Prevatt as manager, and he stayed on 20 years as secretary and manager and another 26 as president and manager. By 1938 it was the third largest packer in the county, and in 1971 Lake Region packed 1,753,597 cartons of fruit, 50% more than the number two shipper. After almost 100 years in Tavares the house was closed and razed in 2005, and when the association finally wound up in 2022 it paid out about $5.76 million in equity to more than 400 active or retired grower members.

🌴 Tavares and Lake County Citrus

Tavares was founded in 1880 by Alexander St. Clair-Abrams, a New Orleans newspaper and railroad man who named it for one of his Portuguese ancestors. He built it as a railroad town and wanted it to be the state capital. It never got that, but it did become the Lake County seat in 1887. Citrus in Lake County goes back to 1847, when Captain Melton Haynes started a nursery at Tomato Hill, and in 1892 the USDA set up the world's first citrus experiment station over in Eustis. Lake County citrus peaked in 1980 at 44 million boxes off more than 140,000 acres.

📦 The End of the Crate Label

During the 1940s the use of citrus labels in Florida began to decline, and the art disappeared entirely in 1956, when the last labels were used. So a little strip label like this one comes from the tail end of a great era.

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

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