Antique 1910s-30s Old Homestead Mince Meat Label 🥧 Brick\'s NJ Farm Decor For Sale

Size: 3 1/2\" x 3\"

This is another amazing find. The images are wonderful and these particular labels are genuinely uncommon now in this size and shape - a beautiful oval litho of a farm scene, never applied to a jar.

• Printed: BRICK\'S / Old Homestead / [farm vignette] / MINCE MEAT / APPLES, SUGAR, RAISINS, CURRANTS, BEEF, CANDIED ORANGE AND LEMON PEEL, CANE SYRUP, SALT, SPICES, AND BRANDY / ADD 1/4 CUP WATER TO CONTENTS OF JAR / NET WT. 1 LB. 1 OZ. / EDGAR BRICK & SONS - MANUFACTURER - CROSSWICKS, N.J.
• Design: oval label with a farmstead vignette - house, barn, windmill, split-rail fence and cattle - in a scrolled cartouche
• Age: no date is printed. The typography, the illustration style of the farm vignette and Edgar Brick & Sons\' documented years of operation place this label in the 1910s-1930s window - a range, not a single year

New Old Stock. Never applied to a jar, colors bright and true, the litho registration clean on the red, black, gold and blue.

They used real brandy in this old recipe, which probably didn\'t hurt customer retention any. Mincemeat actually got especially popular during Prohibition for close to that exact reason, and it became a genuine American staple in the years this label comes from.

Edgar Brick & Sons. Edgar Brick and his wife Susan settled in Crosswicks, New Jersey in the 1850s and ran a general store that, for years, stocked mincemeat shipped in from Philadelphia. Edgar didn\'t think much of it, so in 1874 he started making his own - 76 pounds the first year. By 1879 he\'d outgrown the store and built a proper factory by joining two local farmhouses together, which is where \"Old Homestead\" gets its literal meaning and not just its marketing warmth. By the turn of the century the company became the largest mincemeat manufacturer in New Jersey, and at its wartime peak it ran forty workers and turned out roughly three million pounds of mincemeat a year - the largest output of any mincemeat maker in the country, out of a New Jersey village most people drive through without noticing.

Edgar died in 1920 and his sons Arthur, Josiah, and Charles ran it another 48 years before the company switched to bottling alcoholic beverages in 1968 and closed for good in 1979 - a 105-year run from a 76-pound first year to the biggest operation of its kind in America. The old factory was bought in 1980 by the Hamilton Uniform Company and still stands in the historic district.

Crosswicks. The village was founded in 1677 by Quaker settlers, the oldest of Chesterfield Township\'s three villages, and its name comes down from the Lenape word Crossweeksung - two centuries and more of history before Edgar Brick ever mixed a batch. Local legend has it that for a stretch of autumn evenings each year, the whole village carried the smell of simmering mincemeat spice as barrels rolled out of the Brick factory toward grocers up and down the coast; true in every detail or not, it says something real about how tied this little Quaker village was to its one big industry. The Crosswicks Historic District went onto the National Register of Historic Places in 1976, and the old factory - those two joined farmhouses - still stands there today.

Most of the artists who drew farm scenes like this one for a living were genuinely talented but paid very little and got no personal credit for the work. The majority of them will stay unknown to us. Keeping a label like this going, instead of letting it disappear, is one small way we can keep their art alive forever.

• New Jersey and Burlington County history and ephemera collectors
• Food and grocery advertising label collections
• Collectors who specifically seek unused, never-applied printer\'s stock
• Framed farmhouse or country-kitchen decor

📷 The last two photos are for history only and are NOT included: Edgar Brick\'s first mince meat chopping block and the factory spice bucket, both at the Chesterfield Township Historical Society. You get the label.