Farmers, Midnight Paper Sales, 1989.

Like most urban dwellers, Gaylord Schanilec saw farm life as a hazy, black and white image of chickens in the yard with an uncle and aunt waving from the porch. But when he set out with a camera and tape recorder to learn what farmers had to say about rural life, he heard a different story.

Farmers offers a revealing look into the lives and insights of four Midwestern American farmers—of their fight for survival on the fast changing landscape of rural America today. Schanilec sets the scene for each interview with a two-panel wood engraving in six colors using six separate end-grain maple blocks. The text was set in composition monotype. The typeface is Eric Gills’ Joanna. The book was designed and hand printed by Schanilec in an edition of 174 numbered and 26 lettered copies on Mohawk Superfine paper. Hand bound into boards, the numbered copies are in cloth, and the lettered copies are full bound in leather and contained in a clamshell box with an unbound set of numbered prints.

62 pages. 7 x 11 inches. Price on publication: $125 regular, $345 special.