The origins of Arion Press reach back to 1919, when the brothers Edwin and Robert Grabhorn came to San Francisco from Indianapolis. The brothers established the Grabhorn Press, which became one of the foremost fine printing establishments in the United States from the early 1920s to the mid-1960s. The Grabhorns stood out for their exuberant and adventuresome approach, with a prolific output of more than 650 books that varied in scale and style. They were proponents of what the great bookmaker Bruce Rogers called “allusive printing,” in which the selection of type, decoration, and page layout alluded to aspects of the books’ contents. National recognition came quickly: a gold medal from the American Institute of Graphic Arts (1928); an exhibition at the Huntington Library (1945); a travelling exhibition organized by the Smithsonian Institution in Indianapolis, Washington, D. C., and San Francisco’s de Young Museum (1961-1963). The Grabhorns' edition of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass, published in 1930, is "widely recognized as a monument of twentieth-century fine printing" (Fine Books and Collections Magazine).

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