The fine print: Arion crafts books by hand
S.F. press takes a page from the past with its limited editions
Craftsmanship might feel like a corrupted term after you step into the facilities of Arion Press. Tucked away behind the Presidio Landmark apartments, Arion Press has survived as one of the nation’s only remaining fine book printers — and perhaps the most distinctive. The publishing press, which also serves as an art gallery and opens its facilities to public tours, partners with wellknown artists to publish special, limited-edition works of literature. Each release contains its own entirely original book design, and every copy is built from start to finish using fine printing technology within the press’ two-floored
operation.
Each year, Arion Press releases three works, often classics of literature — from “Moby-Dick” and “Paradise Lost” to a gargantuan edition of the Bible — presented in a new, pristine form. For instance, its release of Hart Crane’s 1930 long poem “The Bridge” is printed on a magnificent 50-foot scroll, accompanied by prints of original art made by sculptor Joel Shapiro.
“Every one of our books is different than everything that has come before,” says Arion Press founder and poet Andrew Hoyem.
Arion Press’ latest release, its 111th, is Jane Austen’s “Sense and Sensibility,” commemorating this year’s 200th anniversary of the revered English novelist’s death. The novel includes prints, tipped into the pages by hand, of work by San Francisco artist Augusta Talbot.
Talbot used collage art to re-create 10 scenes from the book, improvising on a short deadline after being commissioned.
“I didn’t have any materials — we were on Martha’s Vineyard — so one day, I went into town and I bought a bunch of calendars,” Talbot says. “One of them was all kinds of vegetables. One was all kinds of fruits. Then there were a number (with) mid-19th century paintings.”
Talbot’s collage works, which incorporate line drawings from Hugh Thomson illustrations in an 1896 edition of “Sense and Sensibility,” often depict the restraints and tilted customs of the Victorian era: phantom hands clasping an awkwardly positioned Marianne or a slightly offkilter postcard image portraying the novel’s supposed happy ending.
Talbot created her art in a month — an unusually expedited deadline for Arion Press works.
“Sometimes it’s years before it actually comes to pass, and that often has to do with artists,” Hoyem says. “We did Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ back in the late ’80s. It took me four years to get Robert Motherwell to produce the etchings for that book and to produce the book.”
Yet if Hoyem’s press is defined by anything, it would be in the determined survival of its fine printing technology, with which a team of a dozen or so craft each book by hand.
“This is the oldest, largest surviving type foundry in the country,” Hoyem says, entering a room of monotype casters, where the machines, some a century old, cast individual letters and lines of metal type from molten lead. In the press room, Hoyem had recently spent weeks hand-setting individual metal letters to create each line of type for “The Bridge.”
“The look, the feel and the exactitude that we can bring to it — it’s an art and a craft,” Hoyem says.
Indeed, Arion Press books feel rare, but not only in their tactile and visual quality; most publications are 300 copies or fewer. And, as with most of the books, copies of “Sense and Sensibility” are still being finished in their bindery room even after its official release.
“If there’s any publication date, it’s when we release the first book,” Hoyem says. “But we could be months beyond that doing bindings.”
The survival of an anachronistic operation like Arion Press is especially remarkable in the shadow of San Francisco’s tech makeover. (Though, Hoyem notes, many Silicon Valley players are the very customers who purchase their books, which serve as an antithesis to digital environments.)
“It’s never been easy,” Hoyem says, before offering a qualifier: “I look at myself as a very rich man.”
After more than 100 books, each its own crafted document and work of art — does Hoyem have a favorite?
He shakes his head. To choose would be too difficult.
“Which of your children?”