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.
“Tim and Elke are like imaginary people to me, living and working in a universe parallel to my own, a wonderful universe that they have created and maintained and some people were invited in, like myself, and others enjoyed what came out. Though I never met Elke or Tim, I have strong pictures of them and the other folks, that involve papers and bits of paper with notes written in liquid ink, and there are other inks in pots and cardboard boxes. There are ledgers with post-it notes. There are computers I suppose but they are in half light. There is hope and discouragement and disbelief and perseverance and all for their writers and their wonderful books. And a sense of living in a golden age and then the worst of times. But its worth it and we thank you all, and it ain't over yet.” — Susan Kerslake, author of Seasoning Fever
