Vintage Fruit Labels

Lithography for Fruit Labels part 3

These printer craftsmen were really amazing.  For a five-color label, they used five individual stones for each of the colors.  Each stone had to be differently stippled with the same image. When they first blended different color hues  this was done by separation by hand and eye.  The craftsman would refer to the original drawing and note how much red was on an apple, and choose where the different colored highlights (blue, green, etc.) needed to fall.

Many years later this blending of hues was mechanized with camera filters.  The amount of each color was determined by the filters.  The craftsman's individual subtle differences in the texture colors were no longer present with this new mechanical process.

All the lithography stones in San Francisco were brought in from Bavaria. (The limestone quarries in Bavaria were mostly destroyed during World War I.) The limestones were unbelievable heavy!  It's said that the smallest stones used weighed atleast 50 pounds. These heavy stones were also very fragile. Larger stones used for very large prints (much larger than the fruit labels) often weighed up to 300 pounds.  It could require up to six men to lift these into the bed of the press. It was important that they were perfectly aligned with the paper to retain registration integrity. The final output quality and texture was exquisite.

One of the print houses, Schmidt Litho, these limestones were stored beneath the sidewalks in basements.  These stones survived the San Francisco earthquake.  The stones became so valuable they were continually ground down again and agiain to be used for new printing designs.

Lithography for Fruit Labels part 2

Grease will not mix with water or acid.....that's the magic of stone lithography which came about in 1798.  Printers discovered that even basic fruit designs became complicated when using lithography.  These craftsmen thrived on making more intricate designed labels, and a large selection of colors created from ground inks.

The engraving on a litho stone is so delicate that you can barely feel the design with your fingers.  The inks used were like thick creams, and when rolled across the litho stone, they only adhered to the stippled areas.

The craftsmen would draw a design on the litho stone with a greased pencil.  Then acid was used to etched the stone...a thin layer of stone was etched away...thus the design drawn with the greased pencil still remained. In the printing process the ink would only adhere to the image drawn with the greased pencil.  The stone was repeatedly washed with water, as the ink resisted the water absorbed into the etched area of the stone. The constant flushing of water on the stone kept up the resistance of the ink to the etched area.

Part three talks about how they made five-color labels.

Lithography for Fruit labels

In 1798, a Czech inventor and artist Alois Senefelder invented the process of lithography which was later used to print the original fruit labels.  As a result of his experiments with calcium carbonate and greasy ink, he eventually devised a method of producing multiple copies of his artwork and writings.

In the 1880s, San Francisco was a center of commerical lithography and label art. German immigrant, Max Schmidt was first successful in printing using a process called zincography.  This process replaced woodblock engraving.  About that time the focus of lithography changed and started to grow in the field of product labeling instead of Gold Certificates in the Gold Rush.

Fruit labels became the mainstay and profit of fifteen major San Francisco printers who had cropped up.  Litho salesmen were selling orange growers in California paper labels for their produce.  By 1900 they were selling apple and pear growers in Washington the same paper labels for their produce.

This lithography for fruit labels was a slow and highly crafted profession.  The printing process required using limestones/a heavy stone, careful alignment, specially treated paper, and meticulous attention to all details. 

Read more about the magic of lithography tomorrow.

Apple Box Attractions, Part 5

An extensive collection of apple labels
for public viewing is on display at the
Lake Chelan Historical Society.
Located at 204 E Woodin Ave,
PO Box 1948, Chelan, WA 98816.
Membership is available.
Lake Chelan Historical Society operates
the Lake Chelan Historical Society Museum
emphasizing local history, genealogy,
Indian tribes of the area, early photographs,
scrapbooks, cemetery records, memorabilia
of early pioneers, history of the apple industry
and a display of apple shipping crate labels.
An oral history project is in progress.

Wenatchee Valley Museum has a current
exhibit of the Wenatchee Apple Industry-
recreating a 1920's apple packing shed and
displays apple production equipment. A focal
point of the exhibit is an operational vintage
apple packing line with apple wiper, sorting table,
and an extraordinary catapult-sizing machine. An
engaging wall display showcases hundreds
of vintage apple box labels from regional
packers. 
The museum is located at 127 S. Wenatchee Ave.,
Wenatchee, WA.

The Wenatchee Washington Apple Commission
office maintains a small display of the
oldest labels from its collection of more
than 900.  Its Wenatchee office is at

2900 Euclid Ave.

And, Waverak sells and or trades labels
from her collection from her home in
East Wenatchee.

Part 5

Malcom Keithley

Apple Box Attractions, Part 3

“I talked to an old man who’d designed the label

for his orchard and sent it off to lithographers

in Seattle to be printed. But I didn’t have the heart
to ask him why it was so ugly when most of them

were beautiful,” she says candidly.  In those days,

the price of labels was often based on how many

colors were in the design, she adds, “probably he

just couldn’t afford a label with lots of color.”

During the Great Depression, when farmers were

only getting 26 cents a box for their apples, some

farmers couldn’t afford to pay 3 or 4 cents for a

label, Waverak says.  Yet farmers couldn’t ship

their apples without a label. “I met one old farmer

who said he was so poor he had to borrow labels

from his neighbor so he could ship his apples during

the Depression.”

Today rare labels may be prices as high as $300. 

Common labels are still plentiful in antique shops

for as little as $1, Waverak says.  The same label,

mounted and framed, may fetch $50 or more in an

art gallery. (These prices were current in 1982 at

the time of her interview.  It’s doubtful today that

you could purchase a Washington vintage apple
box label for $1.00)

Part 3

Apple Box Attractions, Part 2

The art on the ends of apple boxes sold the

red and gold harvests from the early 1900s

until they were phased out when the

hand-assembled wooden apple boxes were

replaced by the more practical and economical

cardboard carton.  By the mid-1960s, the

paper labels had been all but forgotten.

Marie Waverak of East Wenatchee has been

collecting, selling and trading the labels for

several years.  “I saw how beautiful there were,

and then I found out there was money to be

made in collecting them,” she says.

The combination was a delicious a prospect as

a crisp red apple fresh from the tree.

The labels Waverak collects and those available

in antique stores, never made it to the end of an

apple box.  They were leftovers, stored by thrifty

farmers raised in an era of “waste not, want not.”

“Suppose a farmer had a shipment of 7,000 boxes

but only 2,000 labels. He’d have to have a new set

of labels made.”  Waverak says.  And, she adds,

he saved the leftover labels just in case they

could be used the next season.

As a collector, she’s searched old barns and

storehouses for the forgotten labels.  But Waverak

also searches through nursing homes and

convalescent centers for old growers who could

tell her more about the labels she had found.

Part 2

Apple Box Attractions, Part 1

Apple box labels – the colorful lithographs that once identified and promoted Washington apples – have been rediscovered in old packing sheds, attic trunks and warehouses.  They are sought after as collectibles

unique to our state and are treasured as nostalgic

reminders of a bygone era.

Graphic illustrators, inspired by the scenic beauty of Washington, painted an idyllic, sometimes whimsical,

picture of a lush land filled with quaint alpine villages, flowing rivers, healthy children and valleys brimming over with orchards of perfect apples.  Their illustrations

printed as labels firmly affixed to the ends of wooden packing crates, identified and promoted the state’s apple crop as it was shipped to markets throughout the country.

While some private collections contain over 1,000 different labels, it is almost impossible to determine just how many were created.  Some labels were used for only one season and almost every orchard, large or small, had at least one label.

Malcom Keithley