Ninja Press is exceedingly proud to announce the publication of its most recent book for 2019, Departures by Gaylord Schanilec. Well known as a master of the wood engraving and fine press printer publishing under the imprint of Midnight Paper Sales, with Departures Schanilec brings his particular poetic voice to the page in this inaugural slim volume of poems.

The view has broken in two:
a road of Swedish stones
the buildings along Spring Street
a margin of bare trees and beyond
the lake of frozen tears.
I sit with the past in his painting.

They were in the park
he at his easel, she at hers
his formal oil studies
hers wild-lined pastels.
She died of suicide
and he of what was left.

— From “Departures,” Gaylord Schanilec

The type is hand set Walbaum, designed by Justus Erich Walbaum circa 1803 in Germany. Baker is used for the display, designed by Russell Maret in Rome in 2010 and cast in metal by Ed Rayher in 2016. The text is printed letterpress on dampened Langley, handmade in 1986 at the Barcham Green Hayle Mill, an English paper mill long closed. Two watermarks can be seen throughout, one of which includes the date. The cover is persimmon-washed Belgian flax paper, handmade at Cave Paper in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

The artwork consists of photographs by Carolee Campbell of selected details from the first in a series of large-scale, two-fold wood engravings by Gaylord Schanilec showing a flock of American White Pelicans (Pelecanus erythrorhynchos) taking off from the shore along Lake Pepin. The engravings are inserted into the 2015 Midnight Paper Sales publication, Lac des Pleurs, Report from Lake Pepin by Gaylord Schanilec. Both engravings and text were printed by Schanilec at his press in Stockholm, Wisconsin. The photographs were executed in 2019 with permission especially for this edition of Departures. The photographs were printed digitally on Japanese Nyodo Kozo-shi using Epson UltraChrome K3 inks.

The design, presswork, binding, and photography are by Carolee Campbell at Ninja Press with the assistance of Farida Sunada in the bindery.

The edition is comprised of 70 signed and numbered copies with an additional 8 lettered hors commerce.

11.75 inches by 7.50 inches. 24 pages.