Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1977
21 x 30cm, 1pp black on cream paper with a design for jam pot covers (the printed paper placed on the outside of jam lids). The design here is based on Saint Just's famous dictum "TOO MANY LAWS TOO FEW EXAMPLES". Limitation unknown.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1977
9.5 × 12.1Bm, brown on cream paper in folded 4pp light brown folder. The image by Ron Costley is of a stag, a crab together on a beach with the text "Enchantment An ear-alluring sweetness." a line from "On Abstinence from Animal Food" by Porphyry. a translation of part of the poem is printed on the inside of the cover - translated by Thomas Taylor. The section tells of how stags and horses and crabs can be charmed by music - the point being that the animals have more consciousness than usually ascribed to them in the days of the Romans. Porphyry was an early advocate of vegetarianism on spiritual and ethical grounds and this work reflects that philosophy.
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Vancouver: Image Bank, n.d. (1977)
9 x 14cm, 2pp. Artist designed card issued by Hundertmark for inclusion in the Image Bank Postcard box with printed rubber stamp impressions by Beuys (Fluxus Zone East) and Ken Friedman (Fluxus Zone West). This variant of the design is much smaller than the card published by Hundertmark and is on a glossier card. VG+. ...
NYC: Annina Nosei Gallery at NYU, 1977 35.5 x 21.5cm, 1pp typographic design announcement brochure for a series of "discussions" organised by Annina Nosei Programming included Joseph Beuys in a "public dialogue", Lcio Pozzi (a continuous discussion) videotapes by Sarah Chalresworth, Joseph Kosuth and Anthony McCall along with Victor Burgin, David Antin, Carolee Schneemann reading "ABC - we print anything - in the cards", Guiseppe Chairi, Robert Ashley and a very early Ian Wilson "Discussion". Folded for mailing, with address label ands stamp and franking. Sadly there are some handwritten notes on the mostly blank back in ink. The printed side is unaffected. Scarce....
Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1977
11.5 x 13.5cm, 2pp. The first of three cards which display a drawing (here by Gary Hincks) of an armoured tracked weapon from the second world war - this appears to be a US M7 Priest (from the double barrel) and it is camouflaged by the addition of tree branches on the sides (which one presumes are from birch trees). The birch is a tree that only grows from the East of Europe to the West but not South at all unless at high altitude (the tree does not like hot weather). This card reminds one - as with the other similar works - that even in the beauty of the countryside lurks death. As such it is a momento mori and not the first or last such work in Finlay's oeuvre. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1977
56.5 × 68.7cm, two colour silkscreen with typography by Ron Costley from Finlay's instruction. The text is in both English and Latin - and the former says "Here perished Akagi Kaga, Soryu, Hiryu, Yorktown. The seahives consumed with their most choice swarms by their own flame-bearing honey."
This is a second work of a pair of prints based on the American fleet's victory over the Japanese at the battle of Midway on the Fourth of June 1942. The victory left many of the Japanese aircraft with nowhere to land once their carriers were destroyed and they had to ditch in the water and most drowned. One of 300 copies made - this has a companion print Battle of Midway I (see separate listing) These are very large prints - possibly the largest Finlay had ever made. A bit worn at the edges but overall VG.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1977
56.5 × 68.7cm, two colour silkscreen with an image (by Ron Costley from Finlay's instruction) of beehives and trees some of which are aflame. The bees are flying between the hives some on the attack, others presumably in panic. A work based on the American fleet's victory over the Japanese at the battle of Midway on the Fourth of June 1942. The victory left many of the Japanese aircraft with nowhere to land once their carriers were destroyed and they had to ditch in the water and most drowned. One of 300 copies made - this has a companion print Battle of Midway II (see separate listing) These are very large prints - possibly the largest Finlay had ever made. A bit worn at the edges but overall VG.
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Cambridge: Kettle's Yard, 1975
60 x 42cm, olive green and black on white offset lithograph. The line drawing by Ron Costley is a copy of the outline of the original Bernini sculpture of the gods.
There is a text beneath the image: ‘APOLLO AND DAPHNE/ after Bernini/BIBLIOGRAPHY - Ovid, “Metamorphoses”; Rudolf Wittkower, “The Sculptures of Gian Lorenzo Bernini”; Historical Research Unit, Vol. 6, “Uniforms of the SS”’.
The classical story of the pair is one of desire - Apollo being consumed by lust for Daphne (thanks to Eros messing with his motivation) and Daphne desiring to remain chaste (Again this is down to Eros). When Apollo did manage to catch Daphne (presumably with rape his intent) Daphne's father Peneus turned her into an laurel tree - hence saving her virginity.
The Tate Gallery website claims Finlay explained that "the gods and nature ‘were behaving not unlike the Waffen SS’ (who were the first to use a smock with a leaf camouflage pattern, hence its identification with them).
This poster, in which Daphne is wearing a camouflage smock which replaces ‘nature’, was the poster for the title exhibition at the Cambridge Poetry Festival in 1977. It is the same image as in the print APOLLO AND DAPHNE. AFTER BERNINI. 1975 but with exhibition details added at the bottom. Slight crease top right else VG.
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Cambridge: Meantime, n.d. (1977)
25.5 x 20.5 cm, 80pp. Blue typographic wrappers. A single number of this literary magazine with contributions by John Stezaaker and others but here notable for a 14 page version of Heroic Emblems by Ian Hamilton Finlay with illustrations by Ron Costley and commentaries by Stephen Bann.
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Basel: Kunstmuseum Basel, 1977
21 x 15cm, 2pp announcement card for a showing of the drawing block and a lecture by Caroline Tisdall (in German). This card is rubber stamped in red "Presse Einlandung" - the press preview. One of the many drawings from the Block is reproduced on the front. VG+.
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Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1977
15 x 10.7cm, 2pp. Two drawings by Gary Hincks of the same landscape with a large stately home in the distance.
The first drawing is labelled Palladian and the second drawing, which shows molehills disturbing the scene everywhere, is labelled Picturesque.
Thomas Hearne was a 17th century diarist and engraver of landscapes - and they were often in the style of the Picturesque.
The two scenes here are a jokey method of commenting on conflicting styles of drawing/landscaping and architecture, Palladian stressed austerity, classicism and symmetry whereas the Picturesque style emphasised nature and the natural. By including the molehills in the second drawing, Finlay is criticising the style in favour of his neo-classical tastes by making the realities of the wild a destructive force to beauty.
This example was sent by Finlay to Dawn MacLeod has a handwritten note "A wee "get well" top the recalcitrant wrist. Warm wishes, Ian" in black ink. VG+.
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Cambridge: Kettle"s Yard Gallery. 1977
21 x 13.2cm, 30pp plus card covers and printed typographic dust jacket. Design and typography by Ron Costley and essays by Stephen Bann, Douglas Hall, Miles Orvell and Stephen Scobie with a poem "Stonypath" by Kathleen Raine. An exhibition catalogue for a show of works which were "collaborations" with other artists (which is almost all of Finlay;'s works). VG+.
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