INK ON THE ELBOW
Selected correspondence of David Esslemont & Gaylord Schanilec
Midnight Paper Sales/Solmentes Press, 2003.
$480
item # 22

I met David Esslemont at a book arts conference in New York City in 1990. He invited me to come to Wales and illustrate Whitman poems from the Civil War for the Gregynog Press. I had come to view the illustration of poetry as an intrusive occupation. The idea of engraving soldiers and horses was technically awkward. I reluctantly agreed. The resulting book, Wrenching Times, was of some significance, but of more was the relationship that developed between David and I.

For the past 13 years, we have been playing leap frog: book by book by book. The exhilaratingly painful process of reaching into the darkness and pulling out a book is one that is difficult to share, as one’s creative and technical development is singular and solitary. In David I have found a brother in arms.

In recent years email has allowed us to communicate on a daily basis. Ink on the Elbow documents 4 years of conversation. The book was printed on Zerkall mould-made paper in an edition of 200 numbered copies. 100 copies were bound by David in Wales, and 100 copies were bound here by myself and Franny Bannen in half cloth with paste paper & a cloth-covered slipcase.
Guesthouse, an Esslemont linocut

David has added fourteen color lino cuts of his visits here in Wisconsin, and I an 8 x 33 inch panoramic engraving of his spread in Wales. The book also contain ink jet prints and sample pages from some of the books we have wrestled out of the darkness.

155 pages. 9 x 13 inches.

Color proof from the panorama blocks with the anticipated reduction cutting of the key block drawn in black.