Lost and foundry
When real-life Citizen Kane, William Randolph Hearst, bought the San Francisco Examiner in 1887, it was his new state-of-the-art printing presses that helped “the Ex” become the “Monarch of the Dailies.” Since then, innovative printers and publishers have been a critical force behind the city’s cultural history. Arion Press and the Grabhorn Institute both preserve this legacy as well as insure its future.
Housed in a sprawling Presidio building, the center includes operating letterpress equipment, the bookbindery, and, most unique, the foundry of Mackenzie & Harris (M & H), which celebrated its 100th birthday in 2015 and is one of the last working metal type foundries in the world. Visitors can observe all this equipment still being used: type being cast from molten metal and set into pages; pages being printed on letterpresses and then hand sewn into blocks and bound onto boards and into cases. The artisans who work at Arion undergo years of apprenticeship, and are considered among the finest printers in the country.
Info
Address 1802 Hays Street, The Presidio, San Francisco, CA, 94129, www.arionpress.com, +1 415.668.2542 | Public Transport Bus: 1, 1AX, 28 (California St & Park Presidio Blvd stop) | Hours Gallery, Mon–Fri 10am–5pm; visit the website for tour schedule| Tip A lovely little cafe nearby is Japonica on 5503 California Street.
Until the advent of desktop publishing, letterpress printing was the mainstay of the local literary scene, as writers and political activists seized the do-it-yourself potential of the small printing press. From storefronts and garages, in the Mission and Dogpatch, poet-printers churned out thousands of limited-run books and broadsides, often using M & H.
The foundry, and the 3,888 cases of metal type in its collection, might have been lost but for the foresight of Arion Press’s founder, Andrew Hoyem, who helped create the Grabhorn Institute. Bibliophiles will appreciate the changing selection of Arion’s fine hand-printed books, most famously among them Moby Dick and Leaves of Grass, which are on display in their gallery. Public demonstration tours are held Thursday afternoons at 3:30pm and last approximately an hour and a half.
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