It has been my privilege to print in the Osborne Print Shop at the Tunbridge World’s Fair for the last 10 years. This year, I was at the fair every day from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., greeting thousands of visitors and helping to print many thousands of souvenir letterpress printed handouts, which are proudly affixed to many area refrigerators. I am resigning from that role. This letter explains why.
Printers at the fair have always been encouraged to sell their own work in the side yard of the printshop. I personally have sold and given away hundreds of postcards and posters. In the great tradition of citizen printers, my work often deals with civic and social issues. I do not advocate for any political party, officials or candidates, so I do not regard these as political prints. Rather, these are the sorts of civics topics we learned about and discussed in high school.
On the last day of the fair I was approached by a visibly angry representative of fair management and told that my work, which has hung at the fair for ten years, was unacceptable and must be taken down immediately. That it was “political,” and that I should know what that meant, without any guidelines or written policy. That these prints “weren’t who we are” and that people came to the fair’s Antique Hill to “enjoy the way life used to be and not think of modern day issues.” It was subsequently made clear that to ask for discussion of this new policy would terminate my relationship to the fair.
The “way life used to be” was full of discussions of issues of the day, and printers played a vital role in that. A print of mine singled out as specifically unacceptable features a quote from the Declaration of Independence, and how it is relevant today. Another poster was an 1851 quote from Frederick Douglass on truth, love and liberty, in the lead up to the Civil War. In fact there are Civil War reenactors on Antique Hill: the Civil War, in which 620,000 Americans died over the “political” belief that it was wrong for people to own other people.
While looking at other fair vendors I encountered a new booth (which I will not name). Their stock of hats and T-shirts was composed nearly entirely of profanity, sexual innuendo, “political” messages and threats of violence. I cannot help but note the double standard.
I truly believe that we have run the Osborne Print Shop as a demonstration of vintage printing technology, as a popular source of humorous quips and Tunbridge World’s Fair keepsakes and as an example of the historical importance of a free press and free speech. During the Civil War and Revolutionary War, there were many attacks on printers and their presses by soldiers and mobs angered by the opinions expressed there. I did not expect such an attack from fair management.
I cannot remain a participant in the fair. Even if I were to self-censor all my own work, there are too many people who visit every year to purchase new postcards or collect more copies of my older prints. How can I honestly explain this new situation to them in a way that won’t cause further disruption? I don’t believe that’s possible. So to all the thousands of people who have come by the Osborne Print Shop over the last 10 years, I bid you farewell, and I am sorry I won’t be printing you another “Free Ticket – They’re not worth anything, they’re just free.”
Mitchel Ahern is a letterpress printer and consultant. They live in Lynn, Mass.
