After six years working as a congressional staffer in Washington, D.C., Lisa Jane Toczek ’83 returned to her hometown of Philadelphia to attend medical school at Temple University. After a year and a half, she knew her passion wasn’t in medicine, either.
A short time later, she was walking down Germantown Avenue and noticed a “help wanted” sign in the Philadelphia Print Shop. She decided to apply for a sales position, thinking it would be an interesting place to work while she considered her next move.
She recently celebrated 25 years working at the shop. “I’m still figuring out my next move,” she says, “and it has been an interesting place to work.”
Founded in 1982, the Philadelphia Print Shop has for sale more than 20,000 prints and maps, some more than 500 years old. In addition to selling antique prints, the Chestnut Hill shop offers related services, including restoration, research, framing, and appraisals. Toczek has a hand in all of it.
Occasionally Toczek has to tell a customer that a treasured book or map is not particularly valuable, though it may be old.
“There needs to be demand for an item and a level of scarcity,” she says. “Some publications from the 19th century were produced in such great numbers that even 150 years later, they are not hard to find.”
Among the treasures in the shop: a print of an eastern meadowlark from the First Natural History of American Flora and Fauna by Mark Catesby, ca. 1730; an 1872 portrait of General Ulysses S. Grant; and “An Accurate Map of North America Drawn from the Best Authorities” by Emanuel Bowen, ca. 1755.