Josef Beery, accomplished printer, book designer and teacher, spoke to students and faculty about the art of letterpress printing at the Ralph Brown Draughon Library Tuesday evening, Nov. 3.
The lecture, hosted by the English department, detailed the history of the printing press and evolution of how books have been made over time.
Going into detail on the process of making paper, Beery said he used flax seeds to make his own paper.
"I decided the best way to learn something is to teach it, so I advertised that I would give a class on making paper from flax seed," Beery said. "I had never made paper from flax seed."
Beery said the bast fibers are what makes flax desirable because they can be extracted and made into linen fiber, which can be made into paper.
Ian Shannon,
"It was fun to learn about how printing sort of evolved and transformed into what we have now," Shannon said.
Beery said he thinks it has been important to teach the new generation about bookmaking for the last four centuries.
"I think books are precious," Beery said. "We are always going to cherish them, even though we use all kinds of digital media today."
Emily Friedman, associate professor of the English department said it was a collaborative effort between herself and Derek Ross, associate professor of the English department, to have Beery speak.
"We’re really hoping that this is going to be the first of many talks like this," Friedman said. "We’re hoping to start to create a speaker series like this that will have more hands-on [demonstrations]."
Beery said he thinks people will always wonder how books were made. He said the biggest challenge we face is what to do with books in a digital age.
"We don't know what to do with libraries," Beery said. "We don't know what to do with these big warehouses of books because now what we use is ... databases. Universities and institutions are in a tough place trying to justify the storage of all these books."
"There are so many cool printers in Alabama alone who are doing this sort of thing as work," Friedman said. "So we’re hoping to bring in artists from elsewhere in either the Auburn-Opelika area or beyond."
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