Mary Mashburn
Mary Mashburn, proprietor of Typecast Press, got her first whiff of printer’s ink and press wash while on a newspaper field trip during grade school in Marin County, Calif. That’s all it took. She’s been chasing the irresistible scent — as well as the lore, legends, ancient machinery and modern possibilities of honest-to-goodness printing — ever since.
A military brat, Mary has lived in places cold (Alaska, Minnesota), way cool (atop Mount Tamalpais, overlooking Oakland and San Francisco) and hot (North Carolina, Arizona) and decided to set up shop in Baltimore, clearly in the latter category, with husband Steve St. Angelo, a journalist at U.S. News & World Report magazine.
OK, she’s not your grandfather’s letterpress printer — chances are he would have liked Mary anyway. Through a 25-year career in journalism and the graphic arts, she has built a reputation on creativity, flexibility, customer service and a commitment to doing things the right way well before the ink touches the paper and long after it dries.
Mary loves this printing stuff: from salvaging old presses to brainstorming design concepts to mixing inks and hand-feeding the old machines. When the wind blows the right way, she says, it smells a bit like heaven.
She is a printmaking instructor at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA).
And you can cast that in metal.
Mary and West Virginia University design professor Joeseph Galbreath combined to tell the story of Baltimore’s Globe Poster at the 2011 APHA Conference, Printing from the Edge, held at the University of California, San Diego, October 14 –15, 2011.
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