Wrapping citrus

The tradition of wrapping citrus fruits with tissue paper originated in Sicily with oranges, although from the available documents it is not possible to define a precise date marking the beginning of this popular art form. Until the early 19th century, oranges were a rare fruit and their price was prohibitive for most people. The fruit’s fragility was a major problem for Sicilian producers who wanted to export them abroad while still keeping them in excellent condition. Thus, they realized very soon that, in order to develop their spread and consumption, oranges needed to be properly protected during their journey. The therapeutic properties of citrus fruits increased the demand from France, Northern Europe, Russia and the United States. The earliest specimens of orange wrappers registered at the patent office date from the late 1800s. 

Anonymous sheets of white or blue paper with no prints gradually began to liven up by becoming gilded and shiny to enhance the exceptionality of the orange, to such an extent that the fruit became a precious Christmas gift. 
We can say that the veils for oranges represent an example of “packaging” as a form of advertising communication, with the intent of conveying the valuable and beneficial character of the fruit and attracting the buyer’s attention: a phenomenon of anonymous visual communication that has interested designers since the birth of this profession in Italy. In fact, merchants turned to professional sketch artists, typographers and designers who soon recognized the advertising potential of veils. Simple signs and symbols, without the need for words or slogans, told, in fact, stories, traditions, myths and legends well known to buyers (Ettore Sottsass, Popular Graphics, “Stile Industria”, No. 4, April 1955). Proserpine, Minerva, Acis and Galatea, Etna, Bacchus, Venus or Neptune appear, starting in the 1930s icons or events of popular culture such as the war in Ethiopia, Sputnik, King Kong, the Vespa. A visual culture that actually traces an evolutionary path from film to television, to the birth of the miniskirt, the bikini, or nylon stockings by considering, for example, the female world. 
Shared features common to all veline (also called “scacchetti” or “handkerchiefs”) are the square format, red, black, and gold as the predominant colors, a central image showing the brand name, and a message guaranteeing the quality of the product. Some of the veils preserved by collectors curiously depict black faces accompanied by the words “moro,” “moretto,” negerlein (from the German “little nigger”), “negretto.” While the first term recalls the variety of the wrapped fruit, it is inevitable to ask questions about the connotations of the other adjectives mentioned and the meaning of the caricatured features with which the faces were depicted. There are no certain answers, but we can formulate some hypotheses. 

The spread of the Moro variety, in the areas around Mount Etna and in part of eastern Sicily, is due to the centuries of Arab domination. This variety is particularly distinguished from “blond” oranges by a darker coloring, not only of the juice, but also of the peel, which during ripening periods comes to be stained with purplish-black tones, especially on the parts exposed to the sun. A natural form of packaging, “a well-characterized packaging both as material and color” as Bruno Munari describes it in the book Good Design. This coloration is due to the formation of anthocyanins, an antioxidant with numerous health benefits, which made these fruits so valuable and rare that traders were proud to be the only ones in the world to produce and sell them. The darker spots on the peels, conferred by the sun’s activity and the intensity of its light, would perhaps have recalled the black skin colors of Africans and inspired the work of graphic designers and illustrators in choosing to depict them as speckles. Although not much is known about the origin of this phenomenon, tracing these tissue specimens back to the 1930s-1940s, we should keep in mind that the African iconography depicted was coeval with the colonial expansion of the fascist regime and was the advertising expression of a strong state, reinforcing, as Sara De Bondt states in the essay Graphic design and the colonization of Congo (from the book Off the Grid, Histories of Belgian graphic design) the racist stereotypes of the time. In this historical period, such examples can make us reflect on the influence of visual communication in creating and spreading racist stereotypes. 
Printing methodology has followed the evolution of technology, from letterpress to the more recent techniques of rotogravure and flexography. On some of the veils one can read the name of the printing house that printed them, and during the 1940s and 1950s some artists, such as Gino Boccasile or Erberto Carboni, who had worked for big brands, signed the posters of exhibitions on citrus farming.

 Unfortunately, however, we do not know a lot about these “forgotten greats of this history” (cit. Romana Gardani, collector). Among the many printers are mentioned Fabbri of Modena, Cartotecnica and F.lli Manganaro of Catania, which is still active in the industry today.

Bibliography

Ettore Sottsass, Grafica popolare, “Stile Industria”, n. 4, aprile 1955
Bruno Munari, Good Design, Corraini Edizioni, 1998
Antonino Buttitta, Dove fiorisce il limone, Sellerio editore Palermo, 1983
Pascal Pierrey, Papiers d’orange, Syros Alternative, 1991
Jean-Claude Beton et Gilles Brochard, L’aventure de l’orange, Denoel, 1993
Antonino Buttitta, Salvatore Lupo, Sergio Troisi, From Palermo to America. L’iconografia commericale dei limoni di Sicilia. Catalogo della mostra, Palermo, 28 marzo - 30 aprile 2007
Sara De Bondt, Icons of oppression.“Graphic design and the colonisation of Congo”, from Off the Grid, Histories of Belgian graphic design, Occasional Papers, 2024

Sitography

https://www.fruitgourmet.it/2021/12/incarti-arance/
https://meridionews.it/la-storia-degli-agrumi-di-sicilia-in-mostra-una-collezione-di-incarti-e-addobbi-storici/
https://catania.italiani.it/incarti-darance-le-veline-degli-agrumi-diventano-arte/#google_vignette
https://www.filatelicifidenza.it/incarti_per_arance__orangenpapi.htm
https://www.vdj.it/intervista-il-prof-catara-elogia-gli-incartamenti-degli-agrumi-delletna-in-mostra-alla-zelantea-di-acireale-dal-26-aprile/
https://www.justtivu.tv/mostra-agrumi-del-mito-acireale/
https://archivio.fototeca-gilardi.com/item/it/1/44202
https://cctm.website/incarti-darancia-catania/
https://www.nonsoloarance.net/storia/la-nascita-degli-incarti/
https://www.vigata.org/bibliografia/frompalermotoamerica.shtml
https://www.ilpensieromediterraneo.it/from-palermo-to-america-lettura-e-commento-di-giovanni-teresi/
https://www.sicanianews.it/from-palermo-to-america-liconografia-commerciale-degli-agrumi-di-sicilia/
https://issuu.com/colturaecultura/docs/agrumi-02-storia_e_arte
https://www.cartantica.it/pages/aicis19.asp
https://www.eyemagazine.com/feature/article/icons-of-oppression