What Papirmass Was
Papirmass was an art print subscription service founded in 2008 in Toronto, Canada, by Kirsten McCrea and Jp King. For a subscription price of around $5 a month, subscribers received a large envelope in the mail each month containing an original piece of art — a print featuring artwork on the front and often a short story, poem, or written piece on the back — created by a different artist each time. Shipping was offered worldwide at no additional cost, which helped the small, independently run service build an international subscriber base over its more than decade-long run.
How the Subscription Worked
Each month’s Papirmass print varied in format and style, ranging from large posters to smaller postcard-sized pieces, giving subscribers a rotating, unpredictable variety rather than a consistent single format. The featured artists also varied month to month, meaning the service functioned partly as an ongoing showcase for new and emerging visual artists and writers, giving them exposure to an international subscriber base they likely wouldn’t have reached through more traditional gallery or publishing channels. Most subscription plans required a minimum three-month commitment, priced at roughly $48 total for that period.
The End of the Service
Papirmass ceased publishing new prints in 2020, according to company tracking records, with its final subscription issues drawing from archival prints rather than newly commissioned work. As of the service’s discontinuation, new subscribers could no longer sign up or receive fresh monthly prints, effectively ending its run after more than a decade of independent operation. Business tracking sources list the company as no longer active, consistent with a small, founder-run subscription business quietly winding down rather than undergoing a high-profile shutdown or acquisition.
What the Domain Shows Today
It’s worth noting for anyone researching this topic that the papirmass.com domain has since changed hands and is no longer connected to the original art subscription service. The site currently hosts unrelated lifestyle and advice-style content and appears to accept sponsored posts through third-party content marketplaces — a common pattern where a defunct brand’s domain gets repurposed by a new, unrelated owner once the original business winds down, since an aged domain with some existing search visibility and backlinks carries value independent of the brand that originally built it.
Why Papirmass Is Worth Remembering
Papirmass belonged to a broader wave of subscription box services that emerged in the late 2000s and early 2010s, applying a recurring-delivery model to categories well beyond the traditional magazine or book-of-the-month formats — everything from razors and snacks to, in Papirmass’s case, original art. Its specific niche — genuinely original, artist-created work delivered as a physical print rather than a mass-produced reproduction — set it apart from more commercial print or poster subscription services, and its more-than-decade run suggests it found a small but genuinely dedicated audience of subscribers who valued discovering new artists through their mailbox each month.