Jay T. Last Collection of Food: California Citrus Box Labels: Finding Aid

The California Citrus Box Labels, a subset within the Jay T. Last Collection of Food, contains more than 1000 lithographed labels that relate to the California citrus industry in the United States from 1880 to 1960, with the bulk of the collection dating from 1910 through 1930. The collection consists largely of lithographed labels produced for Southern Californian companies to identify brand names and packing locations on wooden crates of oranges, lemons and grapefruits.

The majority of labels are printed by Los Angeles and San Francisco lithographers for growers, packers and distributors in Southern California. Labels from the Western Lithograph Company and the Schmidt Lithograph Company account for over half of the labels in this collection. In addition, there are three examples, CIT_001013, CIT_001014, and CIT_001015, of original paintings from which lithographic label designs were created.

The collection touches on topics of commerce, manufacturing, travel, and tourism, as well as the promotion of the western United States. The images are primarily promotional in nature and provide information about the history of the American food industry, the citrus industry in particular, and the evolution of their advertising strategies in the late 19th and first half of the 20th centuries. As graphic materials, the labels offer evidence of the development of printmaking techniques and trends, and of the artists, lithographers, printers, and publishers involved in the creation of these labels. Many of the labels depict orange groves, scenic views or flowers, though the collection also includes a wide variety of imagery beyond these themes. Additional imagery includes animals, modes of transport, and portraits of famous or fictional people.