Label Collectors Find Crates of Nostalgia : History: Inventive, colorful citrus box art is bought, sold and traded by aficionados at a Sherman Oaks gathering.

Chuck Fowler wished he had seen the rare Clown Brand orange crate label from the Canoga Citrus Assn. before Levi Hirschler bought it for $300.

But there was no way Hirschler, a citrus crate label collector for more than 20 years, was going to give up his prize find.

So Fowler had to be content to photograph the colorful label for the display at the Canoga-Owensmouth Historical Society’s museum.

Nevertheless, Fowler was pleased Saturday when he left the buy-sell-trade session sponsored by the Citrus Label Society at Sunkist Headquarters in Sherman Oaks.

He had found three other labels from the former Canoga Park packinghouse to add to the historical society’s collection.

“There aren’t very many of them around,” said Fowler, who lives in Woodland Hills. “The guy who owned the place put all his labels in a bonfire when he shut down and burned them all.”

Collecting the inventive, bright and often elegant labels once slapped upon rough packing crates has become an addiction for hundreds of people in the state where most of the fruit was grown.

About 200 people--from label aficionados to curious newcomers--browsed through the thousands of labels on display Saturday.

The Citrus Label Society, which has about 200 members throughout California, holds similar buy-trade-sell sessions once a month at various locations.

The Sherman Oaks setting was appropriate.

Those from San Fernando Valley and eastern Ventura County packinghouses are among the rarest, said society member Robert Greene, who lives in the Valley.

For example, he said, labels from Owensmouth and San Fernando growers are seldom found.

The label art chronicles the social as well as commercial art history of California from the 1880s through the mid-1950s.

Growers commissioned commercial artists to design the distinctive labels to attract distributors who shipped the fruit to grocery stores throughout the United States. They were never intended for consumers.

The paper labels were lithographed with acid-etched granite plates, a technique that produced long-lasting, vividly colored pictures.

The more spectacular the label, the better the distributor would remember the orchard’s name and, perhaps, place repeat orders, said society member Barney Good of Los Angeles.

“Growers could look at the crate and tell the quality of the fruit,” said Good, who owned a small grocery store in West Los Angeles in the early 1960s.

Although praised now by collectors for their beauty or the nostalgic memories they evoke, the labels “didn’t mean much” to the growers, Good added. “It was awful the way they threw them around.”

These days, citrus crate labels sell for as little as a few dollars or as much as $300--or more--depending on their availability.

Hirschler, 86, of Alta Loma, who spent more than 50 years working in the citrus industry, jumped at the chance to buy the Canoga Citrus Assn. label for $300.

But Leslie Warren of Piru balked at paying $300 for one from a Fillmore-area packinghouse.

“I just couldn’t see it,” she said.

Both labels were brought to the event by James H. MacKie of Santa Cruz, who said he collects only the most unusual.

“I like the kooky ones,” he said, holding up a label showing an Alaskan dog sled team in the snow. That label was priced at $225. On occasion, labels have sold for several thousand dollars.

“I’ve been offered $3,000 for one of mine,” said Gordon T. McClelland of San Clemente, who began collecting the labels in the 1960s after working in packinghouses “But I couldn’t part with it.”

McClelland has written two books on the citrus labels, one a history of the art, the other a guidebook for collectors.

Historically, there are three distinct periods of labels, he said.

The earliest labels, designed between 1885 and 1920, showed groves, mountains, Indian villages and California scenes such as the San Gabriel Mission, the Arroyo Seco Bridge in Pasadena, beaches, deserts and, of course, orange groves, McClelland said.

This is known among collectors as the Naturalism Period.

From 1920 through 1935, the Advertising Period, label artists focused on the healthy aspects of the orange and its juice.

Many labels showed pretty ladies with bobbed hair and rosy-cheeked children eating oranges. “Have One” advised one label featuring a half-peeled orange.

Then, between 1930 and 1955, there were the commercial-art type of labels, with big, slanted letters and the brightest colors.

These designs feature soldiers, airplanes, exotic animals such as tigers and polar bears and, now and then, the fruit itself. Known as the Commercial Art Period, it was the last phase in label art, which died when cheaper cardboard boxes replaced packing crates.

On Saturday, several people--like Beth McCaffrey of Los Angeles--had learned about the event through a newspaper calendar listing and were curious to see how much the labels they had collected over the years were worth.

“I have a collection of about 800,” she said. “I started collecting them years ago because of their beauty. I bought most of them for 50 cents apiece. They’re selling here for $50 and more. I’m just thrilled.”

But, McCaffrey added: “I’m not thinking of selling them. I love them too much.”