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.
“As a reader, I had already noticed how satisfying to handle were books published by The Porcupine's Quill. When they accepted my collected poems (Always Now, 3 vols.), every contact over editorial suggestions, proof-reading and design was consistently friendly, and constructive. The feel of each published volume in the hand was a pleasure: firmness, but easily opened (with no spine-cracking) — a production job of high quality. I feel indebted to and grateful for The Porcupine's Quill.” —Margaret Avison, author of Always Now
