I find this "Ceylon" [Sri Lanka, now] junglescape especially captivating.

These are similar enough that I should really just pick one, but they're both so perfect.  A beautiful vintage encyclopedia or dictionary plate really does it for Inflammammal, as do very  pretty rocks, so up both of these go.

Ordinarily, depictions of people in a given piece of ephemera ruin it for me.  But the little illustration in the center saves this one.  

Del Monte juice ads never seemed to try as hard Libby's and Dole to make their ads knockouts, but this one's nice, despite an faintly ominous background.  It's from 1961, right about when illustration quality began to drop precipitously.

Here is a butterfly flying fish plate from William Beebe's Arcturus Adventure, detailing his Pacific exploits.  Bit nice yeah?

Again, I realize this isn't ephemera (nor the above), but The Arcturus Adventure, pub. 1942, has delightful endpapers.

Shame about my scanner's legal-sizedness - some of the gorgeous combine's been cut off.  Still gorgeous though.  Published June, 1942.

I'm not sure what Jell-O sponge might taste like, but the copy says it's the 'aristocrat' among gelatin desserts so it must be mighty fancy.   And the beautiful bowl and berries, very nice.

Like this.  It's just fireworks to young readers, I'm sure, could be well-drawn, could be crap, they don't notice.  The rotters!

Book endpapers in no way qualify as paper ephemera.  But I'm rooting about my collections today, and this endpaper from The Cat Whose Whiskers Slipped demand posting and sharing despite not fitting the theme.  Other illustrations from the same book are likely to follow, as they're stunning.  Entirely wasted on children, with their lousy taste in everything.

This is the cover of a recipe booklet distributed to housewives to demystify bananas, which suggests its age.  That cover sure looked promising when I bought it, but the illustrations within are blurry and blah.  Peach of a cover though, especially the implied snobbery.

Presented without comment; just glorious is all.

Some ephemera enthusiasts focus only on (varied themes) postcards - not a genre that appeals to me unless it's a moonlit night scene on linen, in which cave GIMME.  Here are some varieties - lake, lake with boat, the sea, a touchingly banal Main Street, Black Mountain NC.

But this last one here's my favorite night scene, a Pittsburgh steel mill, of all things. Sadly, it's undated.  I LOVE this card.

For my highly-specific aesthetic needs and wants, this Libby's ad is close to perfection as possible.  Am about to have one of my 2 originals framed.  The ad that follows the first is my #2 pineapple juice ad (Dole) girl but I still loves'r I do.

It's hard for the eye to be distracted by prominent brand names when the work's so beautiful.

Evidently there was a jam and preserves advisory/promotion council, the same way we've still got advertisements for beef itself, cotton itself etc.)  And their ads were spectacular if we're to go by the below.

One of my older pieces is this 1904 booklet advertising Baker brand cocoa.  The cover's beautifully embossed, and the illustrations inside are luxe - those plates and doilies!  Desserts and the sweets were often called "dainties" at this point, and they were that.

And we've got the ephemera-collecting niche of the seed/garden catalog.  They too contained gasp-inducing (I'm only speaking for myself) illustrations of fruit.  These are from 1936.

And Mastodon strawberries!

And then there are the floral illustrations in these catalogs and many of them are just mad.  Here the centerfold, sadly somewhat cropped by my scanner.

And let's not forget vintage fruit & veg can labels.  I could rage against today's ugly product packaging for several redundant minutes, if I had the energy.

How about a non-food moment - this wee Victorian card (roughly business-card sized).  That's a honey of an illustration for such a small piece of ephemera.

I consume no more oranges nor much more of their juice than the average American, but my interest in illustration and archival photos of citrus are reaching obsessive levels with me.  The1940 cover shown below makes me nuts just nuts I tell you.

And for some reason, depictions of oranges' juice in glasses is the most encrazing.  I like tall, narrow glasses as a general rule but as shown here, I can accept variety of shapes.

Couple more killers, then I swear, my next post'll be differently-themed.  But the loving and very fine treatment given these illustration special spaz-me powers.  That pie!

Talk about not even needing text (not that anyone was).  Paintings which're lusciouser [sic] than a photo deserve our appreciation.

This canned-salmon recipe booklet has a cover that's not particularly promising and in fact a bit ugly aside from the font.  But check out what awaits just inside it!

Some of my very favorite ephemera feature images which had no earthly need to be as beautiful as beautifully as they were.  Just a paper bag of pancake mix, but my god!  I love this bag, as in I stroke it and tell it how beautiful it is.

Old encyclopedia illustrations are often knockouts as well, like this peach, not featuring peaches.

Here's another example that impresses in part because it was essentially just advertising - yet such quality in the art!  Here's the cover of a Wesson salad oil booklet from 1920.  So gorgeous.

The above's probably been my favorite image for the last couple of years.  From a Sunkist ad booklet from the 30s.  What so draws me to it (other than my larger love of vintage food illustration) I don't know, but I've never found anything so luscious.  Luckily it's part of my collection, which I intend to share here.  Here's the front and back of the same booklet, which would have been given away free in supermarkets, which's part of what amazes me.