Grape Crate Label, Mont’Elisa
Object Details
- Description
- By the 1880s, fruit growers and shippers were marking the ends of their wooden shipping crates with colorful paper labels made possible by advances in lithographic printing. The labels identified the source of the fruit, while the designs, images, and names helped encourage brand recognition among buyers. California growers used such labels on grape crates until the 1950s, when printed labels on corrugated cardboard boxes replaced the old wooden crates.
- This label for Zinfandel grapes, branded “Mont’Elisa Beauty” along with an image of a pretty young girl, was used by the Riolo Brothers, Italian Americans who packed and shipped grapes out of Roseville, California, near Sacramento. The label boasts that the grapes were not irrigated, indicating a traditional approach to vineyard management called “dry farming,” a practice that concentrates the flavors in fruit.
- Credit Line
- Nanci Edwards
- Data Source
- National Museum of American History
- date made
- before 1950
- ID Number
- 2010.3091.02
- nonaccession number
- 2010.3091
- catalog number
- 2010.3091.02
- Object Name
- fruit crate label
- Physical Description
- paper (overall material)
- Measurements
- overall: 4 7/16 in x 13 in; 11.27125 cm x 33.02 cm
- See more items in
- Work and Industry: Agriculture
- Food
- FOOD: Transforming the American Table 1950-2000
- Exhibition
- Food: Transforming the American Table
- Exhibition Location
- National Museum of American History
- Record ID
- nmah_1397013
