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Arion Press is an American book publishing company in San Francisco. Founded in San Francisco in 1974, it publishes limited-edition books illustrated by notable artists using letterpress equipment dating to the 1910s. Everything needed to make the books including the custom fonts are hand made on-site, making the press more vertically integrated than most. The books are custom creations tailored to each work being republished.
In 2001, Arion Press leased space in a former laundry in the Presidio. In 2024, it moved to the Fort Mason. The press has a gallery and offers tours. Hoyem retired in 2018. , Blake Riley is lead printer and creative director.
In 2000, in celebration of the new millennium, Arion Press published a lectern edition of the Bible in 400 exemplars, which took two years to print. For its fifty-year anniversary in 2024, it is issuing Aesop's Fables with updated morals by Daniel Handler and illustrations by 15 artists. The presentation box by Kiki Smith illustrates "Belling the Cat", with a cast metal mouse sculpture and hidden bells.
Arion Press books are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Huntington Library, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and the British Library, among others. Two of the Press's books were honored among the one hundred great books of the 20th Century in the 1994 Museum of Modern Art exhibition One Hundred Years of Artists Books.Jim Dine, The Apocalypse: The Revelation of Saint John the Divine (1982); Mel Bochner, On Certainty/Uber Gewissheit and Counting Alternatives: The Wittgenstein Illustrations (1991). Some of the purchasers of its works have included libraries, museums, collectors and subscribers.
Publications
The press publishes up to four books each year, in limited editions of as few as 250. Most are reprints of literary works illustrated with original prints from prominent artists. The livre d'artiste series, launched in 1982, includes James Joyce's Ulysses illustrated with etchings by Robert Motherwell, the poetry of W. B. Yeats illustrated with etchings by Richard Diebenkorn, Jean Toomer's Cane illustrated with woodblock prints by Martin Puryear, and the poetry of Wallace Stevens illustrated by Jasper Johns. In 1979 it published a multi-volume edition of Moby-Dick on hand-made paper, illustrated with wood engravings by Barry Moser, which took 14 months to print; in 2006 in the San Francisco Chronicle John King characterized this and Arion's publications pairing comtemporary poets and artists as "among the most exquisitely printed books in the world". In 2003, the Star Tribune described Arion as "the nation's leading publisher of Fine press books".
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