Our story
Some collections are built from business. Ours was built from a question we could not stop asking.
Why is so much of Philippine visual history hidden?
We are Celina and Nelson.
Celina grew up in a home filled with art. Her father was a collector, the kind of man who could spend hours in front of a single painting, talking about what it meant, who made it, and why it mattered. That world shaped everything. Art was never decoration. It was memory. It was identity.
Nelson came to the Philippines from France and never left. He fell in love with the country, its culture, and with Celina. Together we built a life surrounded by the things we care about most: history, beauty, and the stories that objects carry across time.
Years ago, we founded Musée Joli, a fine art print studio in Manila dedicated to museum-grade giclée printing and digital archives restoration. Through that work, we spent years handling historical images, restoring damaged artworks, and turning pieces of the past into prints made to last.
And somewhere in that process, the question kept returning.
Why is so much of this hidden?
Philippine archives hold centuries of visual history. Colonial-era portraits of everyday Filipinos. Hand-drawn maps of the archipelago. Botanical illustrations from early scientific expeditions. Vintage posters from a Philippines in transformation. Works of cultural weight and quiet beauty that almost nobody had seen.
When our daughter Ellie-Sophia was born, something shifted. We wanted to build something meaningful, rooted in the place we call home, and built to last beyond us.
Maynila Archive was born from that feeling.
Not a shop. An archive. A living collection of Philippine historical visuals, carefully researched, restored, and reproduced as fine art prints. Made to order in the United States, using the same archival standards we have applied at Musée Joli for years.
Each piece is chosen not only for its visual character, but for what it carries. A Tipos del País portrait from 1841 is not just a painting. It is a record of a real person, a real moment, a real Philippines that existed long before anyone thought to preserve it.
These are pieces of history made to live in your space.
We are glad to share them with you.
Celina and Nelson Founders, Maynila Archive by Musée Joli
