I know I said a while back that I was done collecting Covina antiques, but bottles were one of my earliest specialties, and I simply can't resist temptation when it comes to old Covina glass.
So, given that affinity, what would a local history nut like me most like to acquire? A Covina orange juice bottle, of course! You might think they'd be relatively common, but it's taken me forever just to find one. And here it is: a beautiful, like-new half gallon juice bottle from the Damerel-Allison Company of Covina that dates from 1946-1950.
Photos by Jose Lomeli.
A case could be made that Damerel-Allison invented bottled orange juice. Founded in 1901, D-A pioneered storage and refrigeration techniques that made it possible to reliably mass produce orange and other fruit juices for the regional consumer market. D-A also achieved market advantage by controlling its entire supply and distribution chain all the way from the grove to the grocer's shelf. After WWII, Damarel-Allison opened the largest and most thoroughly automated frozen juice concentrate facility in the United States. In 1950, D-A was acquired by a division of the California Fruit Growers Exchange, whose consumer products brand name was... Vita-Pakt! Under that name, the company would remain a staple of Covina's economy for another half-century.
