Niagara Falls Apple Can Label Montage - Canada agriculture and food museum
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These Niagara Falls Canning Company apple labels
date from an order placed on February 13, 1908,
with the Duncan Lithographing Company Limited printing firm in Hamilton, Ontario.
The Niagara Peninsula, a farming area between Hamilton
and Niagara Falls, Ontario was one of the centres of the canning industry
from the late 1880’s until the 1960’s.
With thirty to forty canning plants in the region,
goods were supplied to the rest of Ontario and across Canada.
Canneries employed regional artists to design picture labels such as these
which were printed using lithographic techniques.
Working with red, blue, yellow, and blue-green inks,
each colour had to be printed separately and then superimposed
to create secondary colours like green and purple.
Although the labels were mass-produced, they are works of art
that required craftsmanship and attention to detail.
Who ever said that the American Pop artist Andy Warhol,
well known for his paintings of Campbell soup cans,
was the first person to make a tin can a work of art?
