Vintage Canadian Ephemera at Christina's Company

Dumpdiggers remembers when Christina’s Old Prints and Nostalgia was a medium sized booth upstairs at the Harbourfront Antique Market on Queens Quay, Toronto. The cubicle was located on the 2nd floor opposite the stairs in the middle of the complex. It was there from 1982 to 2004, and I suppose it was during those twenty years that Christina's Company built up a dedicated client base of paper art collectors from all over the world. You know I spent a few hours there myself, perusing ephemera in the 1990s. I had no idea it was my friend Mary Juric's family business. She just set me straight on this last wknd.

What's Ephemera?

The word is applied to transitory written and printed matter - stuff not intended to be retained or preserved. The word derives from the Greek, meaning things lasting no more than a day. Christina's lasted twenty years at Harbourfront...

In April of 2003, Toronto’s Harbourfront Antique market closed and Christina’s Company relocated to The Danforth Village Antique Market, 715 Danforth at Pape, where they continue to offer the finest quality highly collectible vintage print art and custom framing services.

Christina's Company specializes in Advertisement Art, Bookplate Illustrations, Lithographs, Chromolithographs, Engravings, Etchings and Paper Ephemera.

People collect the weirdest things. When you get 10,000 printed pieces of paper together in one room you can promote the strangest sub categories; imagine collecting ads that feature doctors smoking? or fairies? or early airliners? even the Titanic? These paper items have more value than other ads shown at the time, but I reckon every early advertisement has some worth. Vintage commercial art marks our changing values and illustrates our evolution. This framed advertisement from 1950 is approx 16x20 and shows a medical doctor endorsing cigarettes! $90

Chromolithography is a method for making multi-color prints. This type of color printing stemmed from the process of lithography, and it includes all types of lithography that are printed in color

Christina’s Company has been serving collectors, interior designers, corporate clients, set decorators and dealers for over 25 years, supplying the highest quality in vintage paper products and custom framing. With over 40 years of custom framing experience to offer, Dumpdiggers believes Mary Juric when she insists her family's distinctive custom framing service demonstrates a superior level of craftsmanship and attention to detail.