Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1997
11.3 x 7.6cm, 4pp artist's card with a drawing of a ship by Gary Hincks printed black on blue. Inside the folded card is a poem by Finlay:
PORTMADOC NAMES.
of fathers
mothers
owners
aunties
ships
Finlay notes the tradition in Pormadoc of naming boats after relatives - and in the final line of the work he equates the ships to being as much alive as the characters they are named after. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1997
9.5 x 5.7cm, 4pp artist's card with a drawing of coiled boat ropes by Gary Hincks. Inside the folded card is a poem by Finlay:
BOAT LORE
Sails
are sails
but ropes
are
sheets
or stays.
On one level a simple explanation of boating terms (sailboat sheets are ropes or lines that are used to trim a sail), on another a deeper consideration of tautology and meaning. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1997
17.5 x 11.9cm, 2pp silkscreen artist's card with a drawing by Gary Hincks of pencils in a jar that are also propellors. One of the most attractive of Finlay's later postcards. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1997
10.6 x 14.8cm, 2pp artist's card with various boats numbers which create a sort of phonetic poem:
4 F43 BF437
5 A58
K CK4 BCK41
VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1997
17.0 x 6.3cm, 4pp outer folder content of two "cards" both 17.0 x 6.3cm, 1pp but one is a red and black drawing by Gary Hincks of a rudder and the other a transparent plastic with the word "Varnish" at the top. The plastic placed over the drawing reproduces the shine of the varnish one finds on most rudders. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1997
20 x 13.8cm, 2pp artist's card with a drawing (elevations and plan) by Peter Coates of the sides of a memorial urn.
Novalis was the pseudonym of Friedrich von Hardenberg a German Romantic poet - the urn has on one side the name Sophie who was the poet's young love (13 when they met!) but who died not long after before she was 16. The other side of the urn has the abbreviated Greek name for Christ in some emotional sense equating the dead girl to the godhead. The top of the urn has a stylised eternal flame. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, n.d. (1997)
15.4 x 10cm, 4pp folding card with a wraparound b/w images by Dianne Tammes of two of Finlay's toy boats. Internally there is a poem:
Almost half her length again/extending mizzen sail & jib, the/glamour of two birch dowels/breasting waves.
VG+. ...
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
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, 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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