Berryville Graphics and
one serious pile of books
September 26, 2009
Ever wonder where a lot of those books come from when you walk into Borders? Well a dozen members of the Chesapeake Chapter got the chance to see.
APHA Chesapeake member Dave Lasko works for Barryville Graphics, Berryville, VA, and he gave us the royal tour about how a roll of paper becomes a book.
Speaking of rolls of paper...
This image calls to mind "Top men..." if you understand the Raiders of the Lost Ark final scene reference.
Shown here is enough paper to keep Barryville Graphics in business for THREE days. When they are printing on all cylinders, in one day they run 2,200 miles of this paper though their presses, which is about 100 miles the OTHER side of Provo, Utah, if you left from Washington, DC.
The average inventory is about 12 million pounds of roll paper and 6 million sheets of sheet stock. In a busy month they print upwards of 11,000,000 books. ELEVEN MILLION.
Yeah. They print books.
In the direct-to-plate processors above they develop the plates you see below. Gazillions of them, all recycled.
Our crowd gathered around a plate. Kind of a dinner for people interested in printing.
It takes 5 minutes to expose and process a plate and another 3 - 5 minutes to inspect each of them. Our inspection took longer than that.
Suzanne Sommers has a new book coming out. Here is a skid of about 100,000 dust jackets. Yep, they are printing books at Berryville.
And above is my favorite image from the entire tour.
At the bottom between the arrows you can see the incoming paper. The roll gets slit until at the upper left you can see at least 8 ribbons headed toward becoming signatures.
And it was flying.
Above and below are views of the EIGHT ACRE facility from a catwalk.
The press above was printing a 'zine' at 26,000 impressions an hour. Berryville Graphics recycles an average monthly gross weight of 2 million pounds of paper.
Below are three images showing the area where the hard covers are assembled and foil stamped.
Above are the book covers for the Suzanne Sommers book for the dust jackets we saw earlier.
Astronaut Buzz Aldrin's new book coming from binding and headed to have the dust jackets wrapped around it. About one book every three seconds as I remember.
The method Berryville Graphics uses for the adhering of the text block is called 'blast' printing. The books are gathered into signatures the same as if you were going to sew the signatures together. Instead of sewing they slit the signatures at intervals (very much like you would punch holes for sewing) and force very hot glue along the spine and into those slots. Keep in mind these are in signatures.
If you look at the end of the spine, the book looks exactly as if it were sewn. It has the look and feel of a sewn book without the thread.
Above, a little later in our tour we crossed paths once again with Buzz Aldrin, this time after putting his dust jacket on.
A funny moment came right at the end of the tour when we passed the security guard. He was reading one of the 3,000,000 copies of Dan Brown's new book Lost Symbol that had just been printed at Berryville Graphics.
Afterwards we gathered outside the main doors to look at an exceptional sundial presented to them by Teddy Roosevelt to then Doubleday & Co., Inc. You can see in the second photo a number of printer's marks from some of history's most important printers.
The one on the left below is Jensen, followed by Aldus Manutius. Others included Gutenberg, Fust & Shoeffer, & Plantin Moretus.
Afterwards we were treated to an incredible homemade lunch care of Mrs. Lasko. While it was all great I think the chili was the hit of the moment. Wonderful handmade gourd bowls of homemade bread, wine, and the discussion about the day's events were as delicious as they were unforgettable.
After lunch we got a good look at David's letterpress shop where he has a Kluge, a very early Vanderecook 219, and a Pearl that stand amidst several cabinets of very fine foundry type.
It was a most bookworthy day.
And at least for September, books were alive and well in Berryville.
Event photos by Ray Nichols.
