When I was a kid growing up in the burbs of L.A., one of the things I could count on was getting a big fat orange in my stocking on Christmas.

Big deal…

If I’d wanted an orange, I could go out in the backyard and pick one. Why waste valuable stocking stuffer space with something that was as ubiquitous in L.A. as sunshine?

But my mom and dad had grown up in Pennsylvania where there was neither sunshine nor oranges growing on Christmas. But there might be a California orange in their stocking. If they’d been good. Mom tried to explain to me that, when she was a kid growing up in the 1930s, California was an exotic place of bright, warm sunshine and colorful vistas. To get an orange in the middle of a Pennsylvania winter was almost magical to her. Getting a California orange in your stocking on Christmas was tradition.

Mom was the target demographic of one of the most brilliant advertising/propaganda campaigns ever: California orange crate art. Since the 1880s, California citrus growers had been shipping their produce to the east by the trainloads. Each crate had a lithographed label pasted on that identified what was in the crate and from which farm or cooperative it had come. Each grower, of course, wanted to attract the eye of his customers and so to keep up with demand, creative lithographers invented evermore brighter and fanciful labels. By the 1930s, large print shops in Southern California were turning our hundreds of colorful designs. These nameless graphic designers were just selling fruit. But they also helped invent the myth of California. And, no doubt, when my parents chose to move to the area following WWII, images of California orange crate labels bounced in their heads.

As things worked out, I became a graphic designer and artist in Souther California and worked with Sunkist on many advertising campaigns. Although orange crate art was, by that time, a thing of the past, their style was still a part of Sunkist’s branding. I even had the opportunity to design the catalog for an exhibit of orange crate art. In the process, I collected a few samples from various eras…