Can Label, Electric Brand Olney Succotash, Original Lithograph, Antique

Before the grocery store. Before the supermarket. Before the can aisle existed at all — someone printed these by hand, one color at a time.

This is an original vegetable can label — a circa 1890s stone lithograph for Electric Brand Succotash, by Olney & Floyd. It has never been used. Never wrapped a can. It is New Old Stock in excellent mint condition.

This is one of the oldest and rarest labels you will find anywhere. The absence of weight markings — required by law from around 1906 — dates it firmly to before that year. It is almost certainly from the 1890s, when electricity and the telephone were not utilities but marvels: things that arrived in your life and changed what you believed was possible. The label captures that moment with complete sincerity. A Goddess holds a light aloft, electricity flowing from a battery in her other hand. Two small children stand beside her, each holding a telephone. This was not whimsy. This was how a canning company chose to represent their brand — as something luminous, modern, almost magical. The other face of the label shows corn and beans with ornate red lettering: the actual succotash inside. Both sides are works of craft.

Stone lithography of the 1890s was the finest commercial printing in the world. The first offset press for paper was not produced until 1903. Everything before that was hand-made, plate by plate, color by color, taking three to four months per label design. This label predates all of it. A companion label — the Olney & Floyd Butterfly Brand squash label (DC125) — is also available in our shop. Two available.

Frame it as Victorian American history, as the history of electricity, as early advertising art, or simply as one of the most remarkable pieces of 19th-century American commercial lithography that has survived into the present. At 11.5 by 4.0 inches it suits a standard narrow frame.

A wonderful gift for a Victorian Americana collector, an electricity history enthusiast, an advertising ephemera collector, or anyone who wants something genuinely from the nineteenth century on their wall.

A note on can label collecting: Original lithographic can labels from this era are far scarcer than crate labels — produced in smaller quantities, more fragile, and less often preserved. NOS examples like this one represent the finest of what survives from American food industry history.

• Brand: Electric Brand / Olney & Floyd
• Type: Vegetable can label — stone lithograph
• Made in: USA
• Dated: circa 1890s (pre-1906, no weight markings)
• Dimensions: 11.5" wide | 4.0" tall
• Condition: New Old Stock (NOS) — unused, excellent mint condition. Age-appropriate yellowing consistent with period. Please review all photos carefully — we cannot accept returns.
• Framing: Ideal for a narrow frame — ready to display