High Bridge, Midnight Paper Sales, 1987.

On February 24, 1985, twenty-four thousand people gathered on the banks of the Mississippi River in Saint Paul, Minnesota to witness the demolition of a 97-year-old bridge that connected their communities for generations. When it came down in a well-orchestrated collapse of steel, there was scattered applause and then silence. No one present had ever seen this valley without the bridge.

High Bridge documents the passing of the High Bridge, contrasting images of demolition with accounts of its construction. The images are a sequence of ten wood engravings by Gaylord Schanilec. Printed with five to seven colors, these compositions blend together in a cinemagraphic-like style, affording views of the bridge as if on a walk. Accompanying the engravings are nine stort stories derived from Saint Paul newspapers accounts tracing the bridge’s construction in the late 1800’s. Revised and edited by Clayton Schanilec, these stories maintain the “tip-your-hat-to-the-lady” journalistic style of the time.

High Bridge was designed and printed by Gaylord Schanilec. The woodblocks are end-grain maple, the type Plantin, and the paper Basingwerk Heavyweight, a British mould-made. The book was hand-bound at the Campbell-Logan Bindery. Issued in a signed edition of 200 numbered and 26 lettered copies, the lettered copies are quarter-bound in leather with marbled end sheets and hand-made cover paper created especially for the edition by Amanda Degener. The lettered copies also include a separate set of prints and are contained in a clamshell box.

48 pages. 8 x 11 inches. Price on publication: $110 standard; $245 special.