I first met Sean Lynch in 1991 when I had moved schools, again, and I knew we’d become friends because he had his hair a little like Jim Bob Morrison from Carter USM. Two short years later and Sean was accepted to study Typography and Graphic Communication at Reading University. We all have defining moments in our lives, they can be joyous, painful, confirm our course or unexpectedly throw us in a wholly new direction. Those first few years at school and Sean’s subsequent university years held many defining moments for us both but there’s one that would lay a path to Ten Point Press. Here it is in Sean’s own words:
I was 18 and leaving home, going to Reading, just outside London to embark on four years of a degree in typography and graphic communication, which is graphic design. Two weeks into the course, September, 1993, we had a visiting lecture, Ken Garland, quite a noted authority on graphic design. This guy, he's in his seventies, quite eccentrically dressed. He's not looked at anyone in particular. He's not announced himself. So we're expecting this big introduction and he's turned around and said, “blue". That was it, turned on his heels and dandered out. You know, it was silent before, there was a good pause of about a minute and a half. Oh my God, is this normal? Have we missed something, was he Ken Garland? What is going on? So I sat down with a blank piece of paper and thought, ‘Oh no’. It's just so big - blue. So everyone had beautiful things drawn, beautiful skies and beautiful interpretations of the word blue and everyone had taken it quite literal, few people had gone off the wall, you know?
So I thought, right, I'll just run with this here. With a pen and paper, I just very cleanly drew the outline of the word blue, but I coloured it in green. So everyone put up their work on the wall and it was just a sea off blue. Just a complete sea of blue with this green thing. The swing doors have opened and Ken has come in, looked at the wall first, stopped and looked at the wall. He came to every piece. He picked out something really amazing or discovered something really amazing in each different piece. He made everyone walking away feel great about themselves. Buoyed, them up. He left mine to the last and he loved it. Such a noted guy, a famous guy, someone I look up to was happy with what I'd done. It gave me all the confidence in the world that I needed. It had such a profound effect on me and it was all down to an eccentrically dressed guy coming out with the word blue and turning on his heels.
(Transcribed from original animation/audio: Future Shorts/Dir: Joel Simon/N. Ireland)
After completing his degree Sean stayed on in Reading then travelled in Europe, to ring the last out of student life before embarking on his career. Fast forward to 2003 and Sean is now running his own graphic design business, Ten Point Design, from the idyllic shores of Strangford Lough. In 2004, though a chance meeting, Sean offered Stranmillis College a good home for a press they were disposing of, and so, into his possession came a one and a half tonne Albion Printing Press, built in 1830 and Ten Point Press (TPP) was conceived.
Appropriate premises were required to house the press while it remained in its component parts in a garage a few miles down the road in Portaferry. Thankfully the renovation of an old, Main Street building in Kircubbin for offices and a restaurant was nearing completion and the owner had agreed to bolster a second floor room to accommodate the Press. Abandoning all sense of health and safety eight lads, roped and hauled the press up a semi constructed staircase onto the second floor and into the reinforced room. A second room was to house the design studio.
Given the unique nature of the now installed press and Sean’s existing design portfolio it wasn’t long before the first commission rolled in, March 2006 to be exact, via Joe McMeekin who managed the then Bookshop at Queens, and what a way to start. A joint production with Kevin Ring at Beat Scene Press of a Dan Fante poem ‘Supermarket’. The poem was later collected as ‘The Market’ in ‘Kissed by a Fat Waitress’ published by Sun Dog Press in 2008. I had read as much of Dan Fante as I could and it was like Christmas and my birthday rolled into one that my friend was going be producing a Dan Fante broadside and I was going to be there for it.
Sean had a helluva time producing 'Supermarket' on that old Albion Press, it really was a behemoth and not conducive to fine print. After a lot of sweat and probably some private tears the shift to a mixed media production was made. It was decided to allow the rough nature of the print from the press to sit within an inkjet printed barcode (abandoning the original linocut method) with a thick ‘blood’ red line dripping from it to visually interrupt the poem, which was after all, what Sean had been commissioned to do. On my visits to the press at the time I gave as much encouragement as I could in the form of asking Sean repeatedly when we were going for a pint.
100 production copies were made along with several author and publishing copies with the intention of them selling via Beat Scene. With the ink still drying on the ‘blood drip’ the broadsides were sent off to Dan to sign and return, but even a well oiled machine can slip a gear. Kevin, Sean and Joe had invested heavily in the project but it was easy for me to simply be excited about the prospect of seeing and hopefully getting to own a signed Dan Fante broadside, and so we waited for their return. And waited, and waited. Finally we got word, here’s the correspondence:
Joe to Dan:
Hi Dan,
Joe McMeekin here in Belfast-- Ireland.
I'm the guy that that sent you Sean Lynch's broadsides... hope you like them.
When signed can you send them to Kevin Ring.
He'll reimburse you fully.
Regards,
Joe
Dan to Joe:
Hi Joe.
Shit! Was I meant to sign those broadsides? No one told me! I already gave about thirty away to bookstores. Anyway, give me an address and I'll sign what I have and send them back.
Sorry man, I had no idea.
df
After the initial shock, pints were drunk, laughs were had and the majority of the broadsides made their way to Kevin. An international writer and collaboration with an established press, not a bad first impression to make in the independent publishing world. Ten Point Press was born.
In 2007 TPP’s second commission was received from me. I was invited by Kathleen Paul Flanagan to guest edit an issue of the poetry magazine ‘remark’. I got to read some fantastic poems and put them between incredible covers and inlays designed and printed by Sean. The Albion came into its own here. Being used to letterpress the cover, the font was large and the press was able to produce a clean ‘kiss’ on the paper Sean had selected. I have fond memories of printing the cover, blind debossing* the ‘remark’ bookmarks (free with the issue) and putting them all together in the pressroom.
The creative process is not always an easy one.
Taking inspiration from the ‘remark’ inlays and knowing the limitations of the press, in October 2008, Sean decided to produce 5 broadsides, created using design software rather than letterpressing, to once again graphically represent poems. The results were outstanding and unique.
Promotional ads for the broadsides
During this time Sean also produced one-off pieces using the press and mixed media elements brought forward from the ‘remark’ issue and broadsides. Plans were made to produce another set of five broadsides with new authors coming on-board. But then things began to wind down, the world began to wind down, dramatically, and the press became a drain. Ten Point Design moved to a solely online concern enabling Sean to still manage clients. Ten Point Press sadly closed and ‘Anna’ (the press’s pet name) found a new home England. It proved as hard to get out of the building as it did to get in, involving the removal of a front window of the building and a flat bed truck taking up considerable space on Main Street, Kircubbin.
A new opportunity presented itself to Sean with an application to the Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO). It led to a two year tour of Central Asia in varying job roles, experiencing a wide, colourful range of influences. Sean became our man in a foreign land and I think visited nearly every country ending in ‘stan. All the correspondence we shared at the time was one of adventure, new experiences and possibilities and though there were many Sean finally returned home in 2014, to the small town where Ten Point had started.
Our friendship has had many defining moments over its 28 years, loss, elation, travel, separation, health and financial scares and a whole host of other things that are relevant only to the two of us but I have never asked Sean why the hell he didn’t start with a smaller press!
I remember the explosion of online content in the earlier days of the internet, poetry journals and flash fiction. It was a new way to discover writers. I know I did at the time and still read and follow those people today. I've the impression it’s not as bloated now and has maybe found an even keel. But when it comes to broadsides, these expressions of a work of art that are in turn works of art themselves, our passion to possess them is hardcoded into us. It is why vinyl remained, with their album cover artwork accompanying the aural experience. It is why there are famous book covers and why kindles will never take over the world. It is why we display what we read, why we will always want that feeling of holding a printed thing in our hands, it is because of these most human of instincts that the broadside will endure.
rebirth...?
PRODUCTIONS & BROADSIDES
Some of the items discussed above have recently been unearthed and are once again available.
Dan Fante ‘Supermarket’
View here. Possibly still for sale online.
‘remark’ issue 53, April 2007
Contributors in order of appearance:
Remaining for sale copies signed by Tony O’Neill and Tommy Trantino. Please use the 'email me' link from Ten Point Press if interested.
TP003: ‘Becoming More Like Jesus’ - Tony O’Neill
TP004: ‘The Beautiful Fire’ - Hosho McCreesh
TP005: ‘for days now’ - Christopher Cunningham
TP006: ‘Marriage, as Still Life’ - justin.barrett
TP007: ‘a simple exchange’ - Brian McGettrick
Travels abroad had unsold copies of these broadsides boxed but with the recent enforced stay at home and an attic clear they were rediscovered and are available once again!
FOR SALE from Ten Point Press
*A blind deboss is letterpress printing without ink
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