The name bewilders me, but the fonts enchant, especially on "tomatoes".

Ignorance: egregious.  Design: near-flawless.  What does a collector do?  (One purchases bulk lots unknowingly containing beautiful but racist can labels, in this case.)

I'm so fond of vintage Sunkist that sometimes I forget Dole's triumphs in the '20s through '40s.  1938 here:

Approximately 0% of magazine ads produced in the last 50 years are that attractive, if you ask Inflammammal.  And it's not even necessarily the best, just the one I looked at most recently.

As I've not mentioned it before, and as its packaging is rightfully among the top handful of American commercial design icons:

Postmarked in 1949; the writer notes he is having a "swell" time.

I don't have anything to add to it, today; these German cherries are beautiful.  The leaf edges, too, the gently curling ones.

Postmarked 1900, "A California Paradox", oranges growing with snowy peaks behind.  (Indeed I live in the greatest state.)  

Sometimes, the humble seed packet took a leap toward greatness.

Lacks the detail I usually crave, yet still perfectly captures persimmonness.  This is the tsuru-no-ko or stork's egg persimmon, depicted in an illustration for the US Dept. of Agriculture in 1890, painted by William Prestele.

In 1900, even ketchup ads had smoothy class, in the right hands.

People seem to use the word at any opportunity so it's a bit shopworn, but this, this is bucolic.  How I love an overbright vintage postcard!

Cover of an 1875 seed catalog - not from my collection - that approaches but does not cross the line into garishness.  I just wish my source had scans of the inside as well.

Radiant (and bygone?) grapes from an 1890 seed catalog.

Designers of turn-of-the-century and just-after cigarette cards really knew how to pack a lot of beauty into their tiny spaces (typically around 2" by 3", sometimes taller as in this example).

Another nice job, Candy Council admen of the early '50s.

This German postcard depicts the midnight summer sun in Advent Bay, Norway.  It (let alone the phenomenon itself) is so beautiful it can, at the right moments like just now, make Inflammammal's head loll/neck weaken.

An unattributed image from the Harvard online Herbaria collections.  It's flawless obviously, and that one little seed at bottom right somehow heart-rending.

These strawberries should be too stylized for my taste, but instead they're among my very favorite fruit illustrations.  I look at them almost every day and find them calming.  I don't own an original or even a copy, just this digital form.  Van de Mark, 1868:

As they date back only to 1969, the images in the Oxford Book of Food Plants lack the age they require to really move Inflammammal.  But this's a fine, fine watermelon; if I mistakenly believed this image to be 100 years older it'd probably make me cry a little.  Silly business, nostalgia!

These pears have nothing to be ashamed about either (same source):

A nice little Dutch number, bit restrained for my taste but still handsome.

Could do without the hand, but the peaches sure are sweet.  From 1934:

This Libby's label worth a look too.  Undated but I believe it's from the late 40s.

An 1804 illustration of mandarins, via the Harvard Herbaria's downloadable online collections.  They move me, particularly the tender unpeeled sections at bottom.

Typically, I collect paper objects for their beauty, not their hilariousness, but there are exceptions.  This is a postcard by BonTon Art from 1912, and I find it a bit shocking as well as very funny.

Some foxy tomatoes from Ernst Benary, 1876.  Their recognizability as heirloom varieties available today satisfies Inflammammal, and makes her grateful the Benary seed library and company still exist.

If only all of these thrilling carrots and roots were also for sale at Whole Foods!

But even fine art can't please Inflammammal like a a very good '40s juice ad.

Another Robert Thornton plate from Temple of Flora.  The way Thornton achieved the lighting/shading effect on the leaves is fascinating to me.  They look like satin & like tough leaves all at once.

As Inflammammal may have noted 10 or 12 times so far in this space, she finds old Sunkist ads unusually well-done.  From 1917, and are you kidding with that bowl?:

I find this crystal-ish design compelling.

I wish.

Feels like a while since I've posted a nice wildlife plate.  Here're some delightful hedgehogs.  Note the nursers.

Some ride that must've been.  Inflammammal can hardly imagine, what with her thing about oranges.

I miss the not that old but totally extinct spelling of "vitamins" as "vitamines".  It's just apter, somehow.  Also, this ad is so beautiful I could yelp or yodel.

Not so very beautiful, but so very Texas.

Furthering the point are these Swift's Brookfield ads, all from the early '30s.  The popover and dahlia combination is my favorite.

Pretty nice Art Deco sea nymph for a label that's about an inch and a half wide.  Nostalgia is best avoided in most instances, but there was a Golden Age of commercial art and packaging and it is long over.

This 1942 Dole ad with artwork by A.M. Cassandre remains popular enough to turn up in reproductions and such (along with other posters of his work).  It is no mystery why.  That man could do some commercial art.  The second one I don't own: it just didn't feel right to post but one Cassandre.

I usually like my fruit illustrations not to be group portraits like this, but wow, what a good-looking crowd.  German, 1894.

Here's a better-paired pair.  Sure were lots of suns and moons on crate labels.  Not that Inflammammal's complaining; the results were often awful nice.

Two more notable, unrelated can labels.  The peacock one makes me a bit giddy.  I'd've hated to've been the lima beans next to those on the shelf, tell you what.

It's not ephemera, but this particular Robert John Thornton plate from his Temple of Flora is one of my favorite images of all time and I feel like sharing, so here it comes, "The Night-Blooming Cactus":

Just because the process depicted can be used for great evil doesn't mean it's not a nice illustration.

2 unrelated orange crate labels, unrelated except the moon looks extra-magical in Yosemite.