Now At MICA
For more than 80 years, Globe posters brightened city street corners and telephone poles, country crossroads and union halls, shouting the names of musicians, movies and magicians, and dates for circus shows, carnivals and auto races.
When Globe Poster Printing Corp. closed its doors in 2011, the Maryland Institute College of Art stepped in to preserve Globe’s archive and to ensure the Globe story didn’t end. Sixteen truckloads of posters, wood type, printing blocks, sketches, and other tools of the trade wound through Baltimore’s streets to a new home, kicking off another era for Globe.
MICA keeps Globe's legacy alive as the Globe Collection and Press at MICA, a working press, a teaching tool, and a source for research.
Highlights of theGlobe acquisition include
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Hundreds of drawers from Globe’s rich collection of sans serif wood type in an astonishing array of weights and sizes, enough to keep four compositors at a time setting type in Globe’s heyday.
Explore the type collection -
Approximately 20,000 letterpress "cuts" — the illustrations, lettering and photo images used to create posters — including many hand-carved blocks by artist Harry Knorr, who helped to create Globe’s signature look. The cuts show the range of Globe’s clients, from music acts to carnivals, circuses, drag races and burlesque.
See the cuts -
Original posters and lockups — the printing forms combining type and images — that demonstrate Globe’s craftsmanship and range, from the era of the magician Blackstone to Frank Zappa’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Browse the posters -
Rolodexes of musicians and promoters, orders and invoices from clients, sketches and drawings, tickets and handbills — the paper trail of a diverse history promoting the people’s entertainment.
Explore the Ephemera
A proof of “job shop gothic” wood type from Globe. See more in the type collection.
