Pick a peck of produce labels - collections - Brief Article

Sunset, Sept, 2001 by Harriot Manley

Celebrate the soil--and images of the past--with UC Davis's lug label collection

* Ponderous pumpkins, buffed-bright apples, oranges the color of a California sunset. These images--so evocative you can taste the sweetness and smell the bounty of late summer--are on view in the special collections section of the library at the University of California at Davis. Long a part of the library's holdings, these produce box labels and seed and nursery catalogs from 1880 to the present are a little-known treasure worth seeking out.

"They're gorgeous graphics," notes university archivist John Skarstad, flicking through a box of the university's 3,500 labels. "And they don't feature only produce," he notes, pulling out images of galumphing polar bears, cowled mission padres, and stoic baseball players.

When they appeared on produce boxes, these labels served as miniposters. The labels weren't directed toward shoppers walking the grocery aisle, but rather to wholesale buyers who might scan a tower of boxes stacked for sale. The visually striking labels served as an effective marketing tool.

The university also has a striking collection of nursery catalogs and posters depicting fat-cheeked children picking sugar snap peas and other homey images. Most notable are four poster-size original oil paintings by Maxfield Parrish for Ferry-Morse Seed Company, showing ethereal clouds, enormous produce, and cheerful people. Catalogs and posters from the '40s present a heavy dose of patriotism. Families are seen surveying their Victory Gardens, those backyard patches that were a homegrown effort to bolster resources during World War II.

"There's a hopefulness to the artwork," notes Skarstad, "a sense that you are never too far away from the soil, that in planting a garden you can reclaim your youth."

10-4 Mon-Fri. Department of Special Collections, University Library, UC Davis, 100 N. West Quad, Davis. Call ahead for full access; (530) 752-1621 or www.lib.ucdavis.edu/speccoll.