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Arrowhead Mountain Books, Published 1993. Paperback with French flaps, 93 pp.; 21 x 25 cm (oblong); illustrated with 40 full-page color plates of California citrus crate labels, with a sepia bird's-eye view of the Pomona Valley printed across the flaps.
In Very Good condition. Glossy illustrated paper covers, front cover reproducing the Shasta Daisy orange label; mild shelf and edge wear, with light bumping and creasing to the edges and corners. Binding tight; pages clean and unmarked. The promotional issue distributed by Pomona First Federal Savings and Loan Association, so stated on the rear cover, with a message from its president on the front flap. Forty labels from the collection of Levi and Dorothy Anna Hirschler of Alta Loma, reproduced full-page in color, each with a short essay by Tom Faye on the design, the packing house, the lithographer, and the marketing logic behind it. Levi Hirschler worked for the Upland Heights Orange Association and as a fruit inspector for Sunkist before retiring in 1969; he and Dorothy were founding members of the Southern California Citrus Label Society and traveled the West Coast collecting original labels. The plates range from turn-of-the-century stone lithography (Columbia, Solano, Carlo) through Art Deco commercial design (California Dream, Commerce) to wartime patriotic and pin-up imagery (Over There, Highland Beauty, Silver Fleet), covering the years when the crate label was the citrus industry's chief advertising instrument, before the wooden box gave way to the cardboard carton after the Second World War. Levi Hirschler died while the book was in press and it is dedicated to his memory.