Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1987
10.7 x 8.2cm, 4pp. Artist's Xmas card wishing them aa "Happy Christmas", a "Happy February Battle" and a "Happy March 15" - the last two being dates of the battles of Little Sparta. This example has a handwritten note from Sue Finlay - "Very sorry I ddid not manage to sent this off to you sooner. Many thanks for your cheque. best wishes Sue." VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1987
12.1 x 13.2cm, 1pp. Artist's card where Finlay uses a quote from Samuel Taylor Coleridge "Nature is the devil in a fancy waistcoat" to create a new aphorism "Nature is a storm trooper in a camouflage smock". Finlay's fascination with warfare in Arcadia is to the fore here again - and the Romantic view of nature of wild and dangerous is reinforced by the idea of the fast moving and effective German soldiers typifying that aggression. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1987
20 x 10cm, 2pp. Artist's card printed black on green with a one line poem with the letters printed vertically. The poem is "treeleavedwithmists". The mist being the confusion of the letters, the tree the vertical line of text. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1987
7.5 x 7.5cm, 4pp artist's card with a drawing of an arrow wrapping around the card and overprinted with a poem:
MEMORY
Arrow
which never
forgets
Time moves only in one direction like an arrow but one might also suggest a wound or mark from an arrow is somewhat irreversible. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1987
6.9 x 16.4cm, 1pp artist's card with a drawing of a musket with bayonet from the French revolutionary wars. A socle is a plinth that is underneath a block, a column, urn, or a statue. The bayonet is supported by the gun in the same way and the stock is thus in some sense a socle. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1987
10 x 10cm, 4pp artist's card with a reproduced painting of bunch of growing poppies. Phrygia was a part of heroic Greece but the Phrygain bonnet was accepted as a sign of French revolutionary zeal and worn by republicans. A note on the back of the card notes that the red of the hats often "transformed the streets of Paris into lanes of moving poppies." Painting by Jo Hincks. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1987
9 x 12.7cm, 2pp. Artist's card with a drawing of a fence with the gate replaced with a booby trap of a guillotine. The back of the card and a sign on the front declares The Garden is Open for members of the National Trust. Snarky as ever. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1987
13.2 x 14.2cm, 1pp. Artist's card with a drawing of a guillotine in red and a rhyming poem:
The French Revolution
Scorned circumlocution
"It depends what you mean"
Meant Madame Guillotine."
VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1987
12 x 8.5cm, 1pp. Artist's card with a drawing of a bust of Saint-Just. The title has a double meaning - that of a dashing young man and also a reference to the fact that Saint-Just was regarded as the "Angel of Death" by many on the National Convention because of his announcements of those who were to be arrested and probably guillotined. A young blade indeed. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1987
12 x 8.5cm, 1pp. Artist's card with a none too flattering portrait of one of Finlay's enemies, Catherine Millet, and under neath the title "LA TRICOTEUSE". A tricoteuse was the nickname (a knitting woman) given to the rather bloodthirsty women next to the guillotine who supposedly knitted as the heads dropped. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1987
12 x 8.5cm, 1pp. Artist's card with a photograph of a sculpted head of the author of Follies. A National Trust Guide which had angered Finlay for its description of Little Sparta. The head was later used in the sculpture Three Heads (now in the Glasgow Museum of Modern Art) - the sculpture shows the three heads of Waldemar Januszczak, Gwyn Headley and Catherine Millet in baskets as if they had been guillotined. Finlay was not that forgiving a man in his middle age.
Interestingly the work went missing from the storage of the museum and had to be remade in 2013. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1987
12 x 8.5cm, 1pp. Artist's card with a photograph of a sculpted head of the Guardian critic that Finlay used in the sculpture Three Heads (now in the Glasgow Museum of Modern Art) - the sculpture shows the three heads of Waldemar Januszczak, Gwyn Headley and Catherine Millet in baskets as if they had been guillotined. Finlay was not that forgiving a man in his middle age.
Interestingly the work went missing from the storage of the museum and had to be remade in 2013. VG+.
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