Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1997
17.6 x 20.5cm, 4pp. A drawing by Jo Hincks of a fifie boat: East coast herring boats. Inside Finlay has a poem:
Lemons without bitterness. Diamonds
without riches. Tabernacles without
ministers. Trees without song.
Fifies
Lemons are the boats, diamonds the fish which sparkle, tabernacles being the shelter below deck and trees being the masts - simple metaphors for the fishing vessels. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, n.d. (1997)
10 x 13.9cm, 4pp. Artist's postcard with two black and white photographs of a well known Edinburgh toy shop (on Lothian Road) and internally a text:
Atlantis, Xanadu, The Herspirides, Tar-na-nOg, Arcadia.
Gee Dees
The various places are all fictional and the Gee Dees are a well known model company - objects that are also fictional reflections of the original item. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1997
30.5 x 28cm, offset lithograph printed brown and black on cream paper. The linocut image by Gary Hincks is of three mugs and a (sugar) bowl which has three small boat propellors in it much like flowers might be put in the absence of a vase. The work is inspired by a Ben Nicholson painting - Three Mugs and a Bowl - the same outline of the crockery is used by Hincks but the propellors are not there in the original.
Keilkraft Propellers are toy accessories used in model making so it is plausible that they might be left in a cup as storage in a strange still life but the positioning of the three propeller blades here suggest they are meant to propel the three coffee cups in some way. The coffee cups therefore become boats and the drawing a seascape.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1997
30.5 x 28cm, offset lithograph printed brown and black on cream paper. The linocut image by Gary Hincks is of two mugs each with boat registration numbers on them . The work is inspired by a Ben Nicholson painting - also Two Mugs - the same outline of the crockery is used by Hincks.
Both mugs are steaming from their contents - but in the drawing this makes them a visual parallel to the funnels of steam boats. Hence this is a maritime work and more than just a still life.
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Paris: Point d'Ironie/Agnes b, 1997 42 X 30CM, 2pp. Single sheet printed offset with the text "The Perfect Death" in the middle of the black in gold. This was the first ever number of the Point d'Ironie produced only at an art event soon after Byars death. This example has some edge damage and creases and has been folded in the past but is an Uber-rare item. ...
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1997
9 x 8.9cm, 4pp artist's card with a thin line drawing by Gary Hincks of boats returning home. Inside Finlay has a poem:
And evening
all
a setting
out
of sails.
The drawing is based on a post-impressionist painting by Henri Riviere - Le Coucher du Soleil - which is usually called The Sunset by anglophones. Finlay, as often found, uses sunset and returning home as a metaphor for death. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1997
15 x 10.6cm, 16pp with card covers and blue printed dust jacket. Six drawings by Hinks illustrate newly created maritime proverbs by Finlay:
"Cross-winds straight wakes" and "Bilges beget rainbows".
The former being a metaphor for criticism causing considered responses or a doubling down on an opinion, the second a reference to the way all bilge water shimmers due to the pollution of oil - the new proverb suggesting good things can come from bad. Finlay's proverbs really should be more commonly used - they are wonderful.
One of only 250 published, VG+
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Bremen: Gakerie Stadtpark, 1997 10.5 x 15cm, 2pp announcement card printed black on white with a reproduced drawing by Byars of his initials (JLB) on the front. This exhibition began only one month before Byars died in Cairo. Fine....
Dublin: DHG, 1997 24 x 24cm, outer white printed envelope content of two other envelopes - one white and one black - both 23 x 23cm. The black one has a circular cut piece of black tissue paper and is a paper multiple by Byars, the other (white) has a printed image of a stone on a square white sheet by McKenna. Byars’ last paper multiple before his early death in Cairo later in the same year. Fine although the outer white envelope has some marks and one closed tear in the glued flap. Scarce....
Dublin: DHG, 1997 21 x 15cm, 1pp typographic announcement card for Byars second last exhibition during his lifetime alongside Stephen McKenna....
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, n.d.
16.2 x 6cm, 4pp outer folder in red with inserted 4pp artist's card with a reproduced linocut by Gary Hincks on the front of a raging bonfire and internally a poem by Finlay:
IDYLLE.
Brilliante
blazing
bonfire
Idylle
de la
cerise
The colour of a blazing fire is compared with the colour of cherries (which is matched with the outer paper colour). VG+. ...
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1997
19.2 x 8.4cm, 2pp. A linocut by Gary Hincks. A work that is based on Ben Nicholson's Letters and Numbers - here displaying the sides of fish boxes with the various sizes and numbers and port letterings that identify the catches. Added however are IHF (for Finlay), GH (for Gary Hincks) and WHP (for Wild Hawthorn Press).
There were two variations of this card - one green and the other, like here, brown. VG+.
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