The Arion Press is one of the leading letterpress printers in America today. For over 40 years, Arion Press has married great literature with great artists to craft handmade limited-edition books that could be produced nowhere else in the country. In the past, some of our most successful publications were partnerships with Martin Puryear, Kiki Smith, and Kara Walker. Arion has published over 100 limited edition books, and our volumes reside in institutions across the globe from the Getty Center to the Library of Congress. Arion Press operates under the umbrella nonprofit The Grabhorn Institute, which was formed in 2000 to preserve two unique San Francisco businesses—Arion Press and M&H Type—with roots stretching back over a century.

The Makers and Their Production Spaces
A dedicated team of 6 bookmakers—including typecasters, bookbinders, and letterpress printers—craft Arion Press limited editions by hand at our historic facility in the Presidio. Arion books are produced in the most extensive fully integrated type foundry, letterpress workshop, and bookbindery remaining in the United States. The facility has been designated an “irreplaceable cultural treasure” by the National Trust for Historic Preservation for its collection of letterpress printing equipment and the largest assembly of metal typefaces in the nation outside the Smithsonian.

All Arion bookmakers go through a multi-year apprenticeship—the only paid apprenticeship program in letterpress printing, hand bookbinding, and typecasting in the country today. Our apprenticeship program has trained dozens of talented bookmakers over the past 20 years, and graduates have gone on to start museums, found their own independent presses, and teach advanced courses on letterpress printing and hand bookbinding. Through this multi-year education, passionate artisans develop the expertise to create some of the finest artist books in the country and carry on the knowledge of traditional bookmaking forward into the 21st century.

The Making Process
Arion’s facility is one of the few places left in the country where the entire process of making a book by hand is practiced under one roof. Here traditional bookmaking—from the casting of metal type through bookbinding by hand— is still practiced from start to finish using the technologies familiar to Gutenberg. Books begin in the foundry where lead ingots are melted to form the typeface for our editions, which are then used in the pressroom to print the pages for the book. These pages are then folded, collated, and stitched by hand in the Bindery to complete the binding for each volume. As stewards of two centuries of San Francisco printing history, Arion Press exists as a forum where these disappearing crafts are celebrated and preserved.

The Production Model
Arion Press collaborates with leading authors and visual artists to create limited-edition artist books by hand. We have a select group of subscribers who are committed to purchasing each new edition we produce. As printer publishers, we design and distribute each book ourselves via a subscription model along with direct sales to individuals, libraries, and institutions across the world. Our books are typically published in editions of 250 copies and are issued in several binding variants, often accompanied by an additional print or suite of prints. The press aims to print 3-4 books each year, and this small-batch production model is designed to give our staff of craftspeople the time to create one-of-a-kind, collectible books that are handmade from font to cover.

The Materials
Arion Press employs the full array of traditional materials and supplies used in making fine-press books. These materials include: the lead alloy used to cast type; polymer plates, oil- and soy-based inks, handmade papers for printing; book cloths and binder’s boards, leather, linen threads and tapes, muslin, gold and other metallic foils, along with synthetic and animal glue. While modern technologies have brought new materials and techniques into the process, the foundational structures and methods of bookmaking have remained constant over time. Arion Press honors this legacy every day by working with traditional materials.