Crate Label, Sweet Patootie Vegetables, Turlock, CA, Lithograph, NOS, Vintage, Portrait Orientation

Before supermarkets. Before plastic wrap. Before everything was the same everywhere — there were crate labels.

This is an original California vegetable crate label — a 1920s lithograph from the factory stock of Jack M. Silva Company, Turlock, California. It has never been used. Never folded. Never attached to a crate. It is New Old Stock in excellent mint condition, sourced from the collection of Lorie Cairns, one of the pioneering dealers in vintage label collecting.

The label is a portrait. A young woman looks back over her bare shoulder — coquettish, entirely at ease, knowing exactly what she's doing. Her hair is short and waved, her brows are pencil-thin, her makeup is heavy and deliberate. She is unmistakably 1920s, unmistakably Jazz Age, and not remotely concerned with vegetables. The Art Deco border framing her face is rendered with the geometric delicacy of the period at its best. For a crate label — for anything at all — this is a remarkable image.

Sweet Patootie: the name is period slang, a term of affection that captures exactly the spirit this label was designed to project. Risqué for its time, charming for ours. This is the early portrait-orientation version — vertical rather than the later horizontal format — which makes it unusual even among Sweet Patootie collectors. Two available.

At approximately 9.5 by 6.75 inches it suits a standard 10x8 or 11x8 frame. Frame it as Jazz Age art, as 1920s portraiture, as Art Deco illustration, or as a conversation piece for any wall that welcomes wit, beauty, and a little irreverence. It works in a bedroom, a powder room, a dressing room, or anywhere that appreciates the spirit of a woman who looked back over her shoulder and didn't apologize for it.

A wonderful gift for a Jazz Age enthusiast, an Art Deco collector, a vintage fashion lover, a Roaring Twenties aficionado, or anyone who appreciates the unexpected glamour that occasionally found its way onto a California vegetable crate.

A note on crate label collecting: Original lithographic crate labels from this era are increasingly scarce. NOS examples like this one — never used, never folded, in original unused condition — represent the best of what survives. Collectors prize them for their graphic quality and the window they open onto a vanished chapter of American agricultural and commercial history.

• Brand: Sweet Patootie Brand / Jack M. Silva Company, Turlock, California
• Type: Vegetable crate label — portrait orientation (early version)
• Made in: USA
• Dated: circa 1920s
• Dimensions: 9.5" wide | 6.75" tall
• Condition: New Old Stock (NOS) — unused, excellent mint condition. Some color bleed to reverse — only visible from the back. Age-appropriate yellowing consistent with period. Please review all photos carefully — we cannot accept returns.
• Framing: Fits a standard 10x8 or 11x8 frame — ready to display