Arion Press

Arion Press based in San Francisco’s beautiful, historic Fort Mason makes small edition art books with a world class collection of metal type, with an in house type foundry that’s been running continuously for over 100 years. They partner directly with artists for every aspect of the books they publish and hand-assemble in house on site.

These books are stupid expensive, but they are truly works of art.

The press runs tours of their facility, which is absolutely worth your time, even if you aren’t a collector and even if you aren’t looking to spend hundreds (or thousands lol) of dollars on a book. They sell beautiful art related to the books they publish, and seeing the books and the art and the facility will enrich your appreciation for details you did not even know to think about.

For example… IIRC from the tour I went on, the sold out, $3k+ (yep!!!) special deluxe two-volume edition of works by Edgar Allen Poe pictured on this rec includes a 3-dimensional portrait of Poe made in a sort of papier-mâché made with grit from a brick from the house he lived in, and the images inside the volumes are offset lithographs overprinted with letterpress using metal type they cast on site. Like… most people don’t know what those words even mean and that’s my somewhat laymen’s breakdown of it.

But the Press is cool as hell. Check it out!!!