Pallido California Extra Virgin Olive Oil Poster

David Lance Goines is known as a writer and lecturer as well as an illustrator and printer of both letterpress and offset lithography, his work much exhibited and collected throughout the country. But his Arts and Crafts influenced design is best known on his posters and in books. Goines was a recognized activist in Berkeley, associated with the Free Speech and Anti-War movements, and he did poster and book work for these movements.

Alice Waters, who founded the Berkeley restaurant, Chez Panisse, was a founding inspiration of the fresh, local, and organic food movement. She met David Goines in the Berkeley Free Speech movement. They began to collaborate on a column, “Alice’s Restaurant” for the local alternative paper. She wrote the recipes and he provided the artwork. He collected and printed each column as Thirty Recipes for Framing and the entire set and individual prints from the set began to appear on Berkeley walls and beyond, establishing him with enough profits to buy the Berkeley Free Press, rechristened the St. Hieronymus Press.

He issued his first Chez Panisse poster, "Red-Haired Lady," in 1972 and his most recent, "41st Anniversary," in 2012. In between is a series of anniversary posters, plus occasional others celebrating the restaurant's book releases, such as the Chez Panisse Café Cookbook, and other ventures. These works established his place as the primary artist associated with food and wine in the so-called Gourmet Ghetto. His early posters for Chez Panisse were soon followed by requests from other food and wine related sites and events, as well as from many other commercial entities.

The design for this 1987 poster by David Lance Goines was first commissioned as a bottle label by Corti Brothers Grocery in Sacramento to note the introduction of some of the first extra-virgin olive oil made in the United States. According to Corti, the labels were originally made for Antinori, the great Italian wine (and olive oil) producer, but a freeze knocked out the olive crop. Antinori returned the labels to Corti, whose grocery was to carry the Antinori oil. Corti got Goines to re-do the labels for the Pallido and Verdesco oils, “Extra Virgin Olive Oil from Spring Harvest Mission Olives,” simultaneously requesting a large number of the 4 color posters (unsigned, number130 in the Goines repertory) which he (Corti) could sell in the store. He also obtained the progressives from Goines, eventually giving the set of progressives and several of the posters to the National Museum of American History in 2012. The poster documents the arrival in the U.S. of the first wave of soon-to-be well known and much favored California-produced olive oils.

Many credit Darrell Corti for introducing chefs, food writers, and food critics to some of the high grades of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, American wines such as Zinfandel, and other foods that have become staples across America.

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