Staff Pick of the Week
We recently acquired Wrenching Times, Poems from Drum-Taps by Walt Whiman, with original color wood engravings by Gaylord Schanilec and printed by the iconic Welsh fine-press Gwasg Gregynog in 1991. The acquisition adds to our very comprehensive collection of over 70 works designed, printed, illustrated, and/or that include original wood engravings by this acclaimed Minnesota/Wisconsin artist, wood engraver, designer, fine-press publisher, naturalist, and poet. The book is currently on view in our celebratory exhibition, “A Walt Whitman Bicentennial,” which remains on view in our 4th Floor Exhibition Gallery through September 11.
Wrenching Times is a collection of poems from Walt Whitman's Drum-Taps, first published in 1865. The poems offer a compelling poetic account of soldiers during the American Civil War. Whitman writes:
The pending action of this Time and Land we swim in, with all their large conflicting fluctuations of despair and hope, the shiftings, masses, and the whirl and deafening din . . . but it also has the blast of the trumpet . . . and then an undertone of sweetest comradeship and human love, threading its steady thread inside the chaos...
Most of the landscape wood engravings shown here include an extensive expanse of sky rendered mainly in a pale pastel green. Unfortunately, I could not capture this well enough with a camera or scanner, so we’ll just have to make do with the fine mark-making and exquisite details that appear at the bottoms of these prints.
The book was designed and printed by David Esslemont at Gregynog with the assistance of Hugh Willmer. The typeface is Monotype Baskerville set by David Vicke. Gaylord Schanilec’s color wood engravings were made at Gregynog during a residency supported by the North Wales Arts Association, and printed from the original wood-blocks. This was the first time Gwasg Gregynog employed and American illustrator, and Wrenching Times was the first full-length American text they published. This edition is limited to 450 copies on Zerkall mould-made paper. Our copy is one of 400 bound in quarter leather by Alan Wood and Rhian Ticehurst at Gregynog, and was signed by Gaylord Schanilec in 1992 at the Campbell-Logan Bindery in Minneapolis.
View more posts on the work of Gaylord Schanilec.
View more posts on the historic Gwasg Gregynog.
View more Staff Picks.
-- MAX, Head of Special Collections
