The Porcupine's Quill
Celebrating thirty-five years on the Main Street
of Erin Village, Wellington County
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The Porcupine’s Quill is remarkable in Canadian publishing in that most of the physical production of our journal is completed in-house at the shop on the Main Street of Erin Village. We print on a twenty-five inch Heidelberg KORD, typically onto acid-free Zephyr Antique laid. The sheets are then folded, and sewn into signatures on a 1907 model Smyth National Book Sewing machine.
To take a virtual tour of the pressroom, visit us at YouTube for a discussion of offset printing in general, and the operation of a Heidelberg KORD in particular. Other videos include Four Colour Printing, Smyth Sewing and Wood Engraving. Photographs of production machinery used on these pages were taken by Sandra Traversy on site at the printing office of the Porcupine's Quill, December 2008.
The Porcupine's Quill would like to acknowledge the support of the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts for our publishing program. The financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP) is also gratefully acknowledged.
“When the Inksters first published me, in 1992, I learned a bit about the Zephyr Antique laid paper, the hand-sewn signatures, and some of the other expensive or laborious things that go into making a Porcupine's Quill book. I also learned that Tim and Elke's books would not degrade and disappear as would most books, printed cheaply on acid-laced paper. It tickled me to think that a couple of hundred years hence, when we'll all be forgotten, many of our books will still be in existence, stubbornly taking up space on shelves or in attic boxes, now and then being taken out. It struck me that somewhere some future reader is going to think: ‘Look at this — published a couple of hundred years ago and still here, still beautiful to hold. Somebody must have cared a hell of a lot to have made something like this.’ ” —Steven Heighton, author of Flight Paths of the Emperor
