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.
“My first business engagement with the Porcupine's Quill was when they undertook to do my Collected Poems — an enormous undertaking for a small press. The project had previously been turned down by a large publisher who opined that, although prestigious, such a publication presented too great a financial risk. The Porcupine's Quill, however, with Stan Dragland as editor, responded positively. Two beautiful volumes resulted. You would know at a glance they were from the Porcupine's Quill. How many other publishers use such paper or pay such attention to detail? Too few. Our working relationship was a treat. And I would venture a guess that the risk they took has been repaid.” —P K Page, author of The Hidden Room
