The Fruit Is Gone but Labels Survive

Like many passions, Tom Spellman’s hit without warning.

Manager of a fruit tree nursery, he was looking for something to hang on the wall of his office. At a flea market, he discovered the perfect item--a bright and beautiful orange crate label. Fifteen years later, he has 800 of them.

Spellman is president of the Citrus Label Society, an organization for people with a passion for the vivid labels that once enlivened wooden crates of oranges, lemons and other citrus fruit. The society will hold a buy-sell-trade session Saturday at an utterly appropriate place, the international headquarters of Sunkist Growers, the citrus marketing cooperative, at 14130 Riverside Drive in Sherman Oaks. The public is welcome from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Today, the orange orchards that once covered the San Fernando Valley exist only in memory. But citrus was a linchpin of the local economy until the housing boom that followed World War II. According to local historians, one of the Valley’s first citrus orchards was planted in Pacoima in 1887 by Mrs. E. M. Rose. She got the seeds from a barrel of oranges that had been shipped to her from Florida. By 1923, the Valley had 20,000 acres of orange and lemon trees.

“We like to call it California’s second Gold Rush,” says Spellman of the once lucrative local citrus industry. Citrus also played a part in California’s first Gold Rush. When the malnourished ‘49ers realized citrus fruit could prevent scurvy, the price of lemon juice soared to $1 an ounce.

The Citrus Label Society has 275 members, most but not all from Southern California. “I think we even have a member from Alaska,” Spellman says.

The decorative labels they all lust after began to appear on citrus crates in 1885, replacing stenciled identification marks and simple stickers. They continued to appear until the 1950s, when wooden crates were replaced by cardboard boxes.

“The cardboard could be easily printed, and they didn’t need labels anymore,” Spellman explains.

Too bad.

Labels Reflect the Landscape

As Spellman and other fans point out, citrus labels were an important though unpretentious regional art form, whose iconography reflected the beauty of Southern California, from its missions to its beaches, its palm trees to its coyotes. The usually anonymous artists who designed the labels often looked out their windows and drew what they saw.

One of Spellman’s favorite labels, produced for Euclid Brand oranges, shows Euclid Avenue in Upland circa 1910. “It’s a scene I see every day,” says Spellman, who lives in that much-changed town in San Bernardino County.

Today’s collectors go early to such sources as the monthly Rose Bowl Flea Market in Pasadena in hope of finding a rare or especially lovely label. One-of-a-kind labels and other rarities can bring thousands of dollars.

Although labels were often printed by the thousands, most ended up in the trash. Local collectors prize such hard-to-find labels as Clown Brand, one of several used by the long defunct Canoga Citrus Assn. The owner made a bonfire and burned up his supply of labels when he closed up shop. Labels from citrus packing houses that once stood in the Valley and eastern Ventura County are among the hardest to find, experts say.

Images of Old California

Collectors talk of three periods of citrus labels. During the initial Naturalism Period, which ran from 1885 to 1920, labels often featured orange groves, mountains and other landmarks and physical features of Southern California. An Advertising Period followed, in which the health benefits of citrus was a favorite theme--lots of attractive, robust-looking females appeared on labels during this era, which ended in 1935. The last 20 years of label production are known as the Commercial Art Period, which accounts for some of the most colorful, imaginative labels.

Many collectors specialize.

“I like labels with Indians and western scenes,” says Spellman. He put together a collection featuring Native Americans--none of them depicted very realistically--for his wife, Rose, who collects Indian dolls and artifacts.

For more information on Saturday’s meeting, call (909) 981-5171.

As for Spellman, when he looks at his vast collection of labels, he doesn’t see advertising meant to move fruit, he sees a Southern California that has all but disappeared, one full of quail and grizzlies and vast stretches of pristine wilderness and beach.

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Spotlight appears each Friday. Patricia Ward Biederman can be reached at valley.news@latimes.com.