EXISTING "FINDS"
Some Toronto arts companies, festivals, the Toronto Transit Commission and even some craft beer companies create exceptional posters and prints which are only available for sale during events or in their shops. Might they consider selling some to the OCH Shop for extra sales and publicity?
These include the National Ballet of Canada's black-and-white photographic prints of dancers (gorgeous) and current and leftover posters of Opera Atelier (sensuous).
The Ontario Heritage Trust created posters of the Elgin and Winter Garden Theatres' architectural details and two of their historic vaudeville scenic flats and backdrops (theirs is the largest such collection in the world!) https://www.heritagetrust.on.ca/en/ewg/ewg-home. The posters are no longer offered for sale during intermissions but would be seen by many new potential buyers (ie., tourists) in the OCH Gift Shop.
The TTC Shop https://www.ttcshop.ca/collections/decor offers retro subway posters and other TTC -related prints.
Might Toronto International Film Festival allow the OCH Gift Shop to carry any leftover festival posters as it no longer seems to offer them at its shop https://shop.tiff.net/? It would be appropriate to include Toronto's longest continuous generator of exceptional poster art.
Might ImagineNATIVE consider reprinting its best ever festival poster: a graphic of giant Indigenous woman towering over a city in a parody of earlier movie posters? Plus other great posters of the past?
Might PRIDE consider tailoring some of its future, exceptional marketing materials into annual event posters because leftovers can be sold year-round in the OCH Gift Shop?
If mailing tubes are available for purchase, more posters and prints will be sold to travelers.
EXISTING TORONTO CARDS
The number of Torontocentric art cards has burgeoned in recent years but special mention must go to Canadian Culture Thing https://canadianculturething.com/about/ for reproducing antique and vintage images of Toronto and Canada since 2004.
EXCLUSIVES
"Toronto in Art: 150 Years Through Artists' Eyes" by Edith G. Firth was published by Fitzhenry & Whiteside in cooperation with the City of Toronto in celebration of the 150th anniversary of the incorporation of Toronto as a City, 1834-1984.
Should it be republished? Updated? At very least, could the best images be reproduced in print, poster and/or postcard form?
The above painting is "The Jackes Residence, "The Elms" owned by the Art Gallery of Ontario. This idyllic, peaceful, summertime scene by an unknown artist circa 1875 is of a red brick house at Yonge and Rose Hill with a vista of the church spires of downtown Toronto in the distance. It could make a great, poster-sized print if the AGO can be persuaded to create one; otherwise, it would be up to the Friends of OCH. (According to one study, the most popular landscape in every culture in the world is a tree in an open space because it reminds people of our ancestral home on the savannahs of Africa.)
Other images worthy of reproduction include: "Old City Hall Mews", an aquatint by Nicholas Hornyansky owned by the Maydwell Manufacturing Co. Ltd., the privately owned "The Board Walk at Toronto Beaches" by William Kurelek (mixed media on masonite, 1974); and "Cottingham School After The Rain" (1969) from the estate of Christine Pflug.
The above aren't just any old, pretty images of Canadian wildflowers. These are collectable chocolate bar cards by Cowan Co. Ltd. of Toronto in the 1920s. Might some or all of them be popular if reproduced as 5 x 7" postcards or in a postcard book without their "coupon" bottoms?