http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2012/mar/13/vero-beach-citrus-grower-has-one-of-the-best-art/

Vero Beach citrus grower has one of the best 'crate label art' collections in the country

By James J. Ash Special to Treasure Coast Newspapers
Posted March 13, 2012 at 2:53 p.m.


Photo by Sam Wolfe, Treasure Coast Newspapers
VERO BEACH - George Hamner (right), speaks with Lynne Clippert (left) and her husband Charlie
about Hamner's collection of citrus labels at the Heritage Center in January. Hamner was one of
several exhibitors on hand to talk about the history of the area during the second year of A
Heritage Celebration! at the center.

Even casual observers seeing the antique citrus labels — filled with swaying galleons, swooping biplanes and soothing pine scrub pastoral scenes — can't avoid a pang of loss and a momentary longing for the pre-Disney, pre-condo canyon Florida.

More and more eBay collectors are being drawn to them and seeing only dollar signs.

Somewhere in the middle is Vero Beach citrus grower George Hamner Sr., an 87-year-old executive with Indian River Exchange Packers and the owner of one of the finest collections of "crate label art" in the country.

A survivor of McArthur's bloody Pacific island-hopping campaign in World War II, Hamner married into a pioneering citrus family from Indian River County.

Hamner helped steer his company through too many hurricanes, droughts, and exotic plant diseases to wax romantically about commercial art. But he also refuses to estimate the value of his collection of more than 300 labels, some of them exceedingly rare.

And he isn't about to sell.

"I don't want to break it up," Hamner said. "I hope to someday have it in a museum."

Hamner reveres the history his collection represents and marvels at the skill of anonymous artists who dreamed up an exaggerated, subtropical paradise for the sole purpose of selling fruit.

Industry experts and art historians say the crate labels did much more than that. They helped make a backwater state plagued by sweltering heat and ravenous mosquitoes into a destination.

"Imagine some guy, knee-deep in snow at 2 a.m. at a New York auction," said Jim Ellis, a crate label collector and industry historian. "He looks up at all these crates lined up in the warehouse, with pictures of bathing girls and sunshine, and he couldn't wait to come here."

Crate labels trace their roots to lithographers in the 1880s in California drafted to promote agricultural products. Citrus was first shipped in barrels, but as packing crates came into use, individual growers had to have a way to distinguish their product.

Color codes denoted the grade of fruit. A blue background told the buyer the fruit was top of the line, "Grade A." Red stood for "Grade B," and green or white, the lowest quality.

In every shipping house, at the end of each production line, a man with a bucket of glue and a big box of labels would slap them on with a paint brush, Hamner recalls.

"I call them the original Florida billboard," said Brenda Eubanks Burnette, executive director of the Florida Citrus Hall of Fame in Lakeland.

Florida brands were first registered officially with the state in 1937, when the Florida Department of Citrus was created. Around that time, there were 370 registered shippers, each with its own label or multiple labels, Ellis said. In the heyday of the art, there were more than 5,000 individual citrus brand labels.

The artists themselves are largely unknown because they did not sign their work. Some of the ones who were known include Clarence Hornbeck, Ed Botts, Karl Wagner and Elie Chevrelenge, who also illustrated editions of National Geographic.

The art originally targeted women, the keepers of the household larder. When growers realized buyers at auction houses in New York, Chicago and Boston, were exclusively men, Ellis said the imagery took on a more masculine tone, changing from pastorals and elegantly coifed fashion models to bathing beauties, bronco-busting cowboys, buccaneers and battle ships.

Not all of the themes would fly in today's market. Some were decidedly racist.

A label in Hamner's collection, called "Mammy Brand," was produced by A.S. Herlong Packing Co. in Leesburg, Fla. It depicts a chubby cheeked, dark-skinned black woman, her hair covered in a red bandanna, smiling broadly and poised to bite a dripping tangerine.

Putting a price tag on the art is difficult, and largely based on how rare the label is or the quality of the artwork, Ellis said. A Tampa man who spent 25 years amassing a collection of cigar labels and other Tampa historical memorabilia recently insured his collection for more than $250,000.

On eBay, individual citrus labels have sold for $500 and even $1,000, said Burnette, of the Citrus Hall of Fame.

But for Hamner, the labels represent a visual business lesson, a reminder that his company has survived when others have not.

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SIDEBAR
Citrus Label Art collections

Jim Ellis: More than 1,000 crate labels — a collection about three times the size of Hamner's — amassed by the 76-year-old grower from Alturas can be viewed at http://floridacitrushalloffamehttpcom, a site maintained by historians at Florida Southern College and the Citrus Hall of Fame.

The Heritage Center Indian River Citrus Museum: 2140 14th Ave. in Vero Beach; post card reproductions cost only a few dollars; larger reproductions sell for between $10 and $20

Other collections: Florida Museum of History in Tallahassee, Florida Southern College in Lakeland and the Lakeland Public Library