Comments on: Illustrated ephemera

Question: Illustrated ephemera

bjork24 — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 10:34:27 -0800

Looking for online collections of vintage hand-drawn illustrations (like so, but minus the envelope), preferably high quality.

I'm specifically looking for smallish devices (i.e. telephones, pencil sharpeners, cigarette lighters, etc..), but would be interested in virtually anything illustrated in this style.

I have a couple books with clip art similar to this, but I'm looking expressly for online resources. Thanks!

By: Miko

Miko — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 11:03:36 -0800

I like Havana Street. It's not free though.

By: breaks the guidelines?

breaks the guidelines? — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 11:07:05 -0800

Clipart.com has royalty-free illustrations from Dover.

By: rhizome

rhizome — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 11:46:25 -0800

Not sure how much industrial illustration they have, but BibliOdyssey is pretty far up there in the "illustrated ephemera" department.

By: kidsleepy

kidsleepy — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 12:33:04 -0800

from the blue.

By: bjork24

bjork24 — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 13:27:17 -0800

Blue to the rescue!

By: kitty teeth

kitty teeth — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 14:01:09 -0800

Dover puts out a sampler every week with downloadable images.

By: peacay

peacay — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 14:04:44 -0800

http://patentroom.com/ ?

By: peacay

peacay — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 14:31:17 -0800

http://www.oldbookillustrations.com/ (see technology)
If those 2 links don't do it for you, drop me a line. I can almost certainly come up with a fair few more.

Otherwise you may like the offerings from the Universities of Strasbourg - they have a lot of technical stuff eg: 'Recueil des travaux scientifiques' by Léon Foucault -- and they have enormous images available. But it depends a bit on how simple, how technical, how old, what instruments etc you want - Strasbourg has a fair few different things from microscopes to machinery.

The machine database at the Max Planck institute may be of interest?