Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1995
6 x 12cm, 6pp concertina folded card. A text "one piece of driftwood patched on another" is repeated on three of the panels - but the typography of each is different with various fonts used to emphasis different aspects of the conjured images. The different fonts also reflect the text in that each is "patched" upon another in an unusual way that still creates a harmonious whole. VG+.
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Warsaw: Galeria Sztuki Wspolczesni Zacheta, 1995
21 x 15cm, 28pp with printed card covers. Exhibition catalogue for a solo show with four plates (two in colour) with texts in English and Polish by Harry Gilonis. The only exhibition in Poland by Finlay that we know of. VG+.
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NYC: Marian Goodman Gallery, 1995
21 x 15cm, 1pp typographic announcement and invitation card. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, n.d.. (1990)
14 x 11.4cm, 4pp printed outer folder with 4pp insert - a typographic design which is part artist's card and part poem in a folder. There are two poems inside on the inner sheet:
Morning
The solace of chill fields.
and
Evening
A broken bow of geese.
Both simple works reflect the style of the Imagists of which Yvor Winters was a key early figure (along with Pound and Elliot) - simplistic and minimal but accurate in the use of language. Additionally both images in the poem are winter scenes - punning on the poet's name and the title. VG+.
We have placed this work as an artist's card because of its promotion as such by Finlay but it could be argued to be otherwise. In fact the Wild Hawthorn Press indicate it is a "valentine" card!...
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1995
6 x 12cm, 4pp. A monostitch is a one line poem - here the monostich is preceded by "For a Seat - to be Placed by a Stream".
Inside the poem reads "A Row of Crack Willows or Marilyn Monroes". Crack willows are trees that are renowned for the sound they make when the branches and parts of the trunk break. Monroe was, of course, a film actress who died early and a great beauty.
The leaves of the willows, of course, billow as they hang down and that is reminiscent of the most famous of images of Monroe with her wide skirt billowing up as she stands over an underground hot air grate in the film "Some Like It Hot". There is also a duplication of the sound of the word Row in her name. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1995
13.6 x 10.4cm, 4pp. A drawing by Gary Hincks of a fishing boat with five sails - each is numbered in the "plan" and are all denoted as being made from a "hanky" - namely, Foresale, Topsail, Staysail and Mainsail hankies but the fifth is denoted as Sunday Hanky.
The "hankies" clearly mark out this boat as a toy model and the final sail is something of an oddity in sailing in that it is not that an important element in the rigging. As such - like a Sunday Hanky - only shown during important events, it is an adornment rather than functional. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1995
14 x 11cm, 1pp. he card reproduced a vintage photograph of a small three sailed boat and crew - CH.8619 - returning home with masts down after fishing (an image of the same boat that Finlay used in the 1994 FLIRT) and the text "SANS-CULOTTE: SANS-CULOTTES" beneath it.
The sans-culottes were the great mass of the people during the 18th century and a motive force in the late years of the French revolution: the nickname meaning they did not have breechs (because of poverty).
This is an image of a working trawler - representing the proletarian masses in some sense, and with the sails down they are metaphorically also without breeches. VG+.
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