Printer turns to past to produce handcrafted Bibles

It takes Arion Press nearly three years to finish 400 Bibles

From CNN Correspondent Rusty Dornin

SAN FRANCISCO, California (CNN) -- In 1455 in the town of Mainz, Germany, Johannes Gutenberg printed the first Bible using movable type, a landmark event that changed the course of Western civilization.

In a small print shop on Bryant Street near Second in San Francisco, Andrew Hoyem is also producing a Bible the old-fashioned way, if with slightly less historical import.

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Hoyem says the edition "is intended to take its place in the tradition of grand Bibles, as a statement of typographic excellence at the end of the 20th century."

Arion Press is printing 400 of the Bibles by letterpress, using lead type and assembling the book by hand. It's a process expected to take three years to complete.

"The letter is biting into the paper. It's depositing ink into a little well within the paper," says Hoyem, describing the letterpress process. "That is an effect that can't be achieved by any other method."

With modern laser printing methods, the ink floats on the surface and doesn't provide the same aesthetic of light and shadow, says Hoyem, who uses words such as tactile, tangible and substantiality when referring to type.

The Bibles are intended for use at church lecterns. Many have already been spoken for by churches, institutions, fine book collectors and those who want a work of literary art.

Though dedicated to the time-honored traditions of printing, Hoyem has not completely turned his back on modern methods. Rather than typing the entire Bible by hand, he turned to computer disks containing the text of the book. With the help of a retired engineer, he hooked up a 1989 Macintosh SE/30 to the typecasting machine that directed the construction of each letter character.

Five tons of lead were used to cast the letters.

"On the Bible, we were casting 56 characters a minute and 1,300 pages," says Lewis Mitchell, a printer at Arion Press. "You can just imagine how many pieces of type."

Prices for the Bibles range from $7,000 to $11,000, depending on the choice of binding and whether illuminated initial letters are included.

The paper is all-cotton fiber from Inveresk Mill in England. The typeface is 16-point Romulus. Each page is 18 by 13 inches, and the book is first hand-sewn with linen thread and then with silk. Sumner Stone, a prominent American type designer, created the first letters that begin each chapter. For illuminations of those letters, Hoyem chose calligrapher Thomas Ingmire.

"I hope it will last at least as long as Gutenberg's has -- and that's some 500 years," says Hoyem.

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