The Pride Of The Golden West, c1909
One of California Wine Country’s most popular Pre-Prohibition promotional postcard images ever used was actually, a fakery. Almost fifty years ago, when my collecting of California wine postcards began, one of the first cards I found was a hand-colored California generic featuring the image of an unidentified mustachioed vineyard master harvesting giant clusters of grapes from a single vine. As I continued to dig through boxes of old postcards, numerous charming variations of the card turned up — the grapes were colored red, or purple, or pink, or green; the vintage wineman wore a blue- or red-striped blouse with his vest. The cards wore different captions: “The Pride of the Golden West,” “In a California Vineyard,” “Tokay Grapes in California,” and were published by several well-known firms, Newman, Pacific Novelty, and Edward Mitchell. When one card turned up with the caption “In a Vineyard in Southern Oregon,” published by PCK of New York, I grabbed it as a curiosity. “Strange that Oregon would use a California grapevine scene to illustrate and promote its wine industry,” I mused. As to that lovable, unidentified vineyardist, I liked to think he was Napa Valley’s colorful wine pioneer, Anton Nichelini (1862–1937), who had arrived from Switzerland in 1882 and bought land in Chiles Valley, where he began planting vines and built his small stone winery in 1890. I was magnificently misguided by the California wine industry. This postcard image representing a California vineyard scene belongs to Southern Oregon!
Tokay Grapes Southern Oregon 1906
Printed in the lower right corner of this very early black & white Albertype postcard, we can read, “Publ. by Frank H. Hull, Photographer, Medford, Ore [1906].” Was Frank Hull responsible for the original image of the “Grapes” postcard? And, if not my “handsome Nichelini,” who then was this venerable vineyardist? It’s a good wine country story.
In the beginning, Frank Hull’s photograph had been used for a number of Medford booster pamphlets to illustrate the Tokay’s success in Oregon vineyards. In 1910 the local Medford newspaper praised thirty-year-old Hull as “one of the most skilled and progressive members of the photographic profession … a true scenic artist who has earned the reputation of producing first-class work in every particular.” Hull had arrived with his family as a small boy in Southern Oregon’s Rogue River Valley, where he matured into a popular and hard-working young man with a successful business.
A few years earlier, he was the subject of a headline that caused quite an outcry — “CALIFORNIA STEALS CREDIT FROM OREGON!” — “An agent of San Francisco postcard publisher Edward H. Mitchell had recently called on Mr. Frank Hull at his Art Studio to purchase several photographs of Rogue River Valley scenes for the purpose of reproducing in color. Some are labeled ‘Oregon Products’ and sold in Portland; the same pictures are labeled ‘California’ and sold there. He failed to state they would be used to advertise California products.” When researching this and I asked my esteemed postcard mentor Frank Sternad how this could happen, he explained, “It is known there was much “borrowing of images” (or outright theft) in the postcard publishing business.”
The Mighty California Wine Assn Over-Printed The Edw Mitchell Postcard With An Ad For Their Non-Alcoholic Calwa Grape Juice, c1908
In a succeeding headline incident, “CALIFORNIA USES OREGON GRAPES AS AN AD ON POSTCARDS — A HABIT WITH CALIFORNIA — HULL TOOK PICTURE OF GRAPES,” photographer Hull declared, “This is not California’s first offense, as they have used this particular grape picture on postals and publications numerous times. This particular grapevine was grown by the late C. H. Manwaring in his six-acre vineyard just outside the city limits of Medford on the Old Stage Road. I took the photo in 1907.” [1906? Manwaring passed away April 1907. Hull probably took the ready-for-harvest photo in autumn 1906, not 1907.] Hull’s irritation showing, he continued, “It may heat your engines a little to have our Oregon product used to advertise a neighbor state, but it makes the water boil in my radiator, for I am the guy who took these pictures and do not like to be disputed by Californians and tourists, as I have been many times, when I claim the credit for myself and Oregon. I have the negative of the grape (No. 3038) from which the photo was printed.” The Medford Tribune called “stealing scenes from Oregon to bolster up California is one of the most flagrant violations of the ethics of printing.”
In 1918, for reasons not stated, Frank Hull moved to Chico in northern California, where he operated a Job Printing shop as he had done in Medford. Later on, he ran a popular furniture and hardware business until he retired. In August 1949, the Medford newspaper carried the news of his death in Chico at age sixty-eight. Not much is known about Charles Manwaring (1842–1907). He had been in the Valley for some thirteen years, arriving about the same time as Viola and Tom Beckett, photographer Hull’s sister and her husband, and lived on the same property. Here he tended his vineyard of Tokay grapes and died in his friends’ home. Hailed as “honorable, energetic, a good neighbor, faithful friend,” he also was a first-class grape grower, and has a postcard to prove it. Cheers!
