01 Nov

Posted at 14:34h in Artist's Postcards

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1981
5 x 7cm, 4pp. One of Finlay's smallest cards - here with a drawing by Lucius Burckhardt of a face with a republican hat above a capital from a classical column. not the best sketch ever as it looks jumbled and hard to see but there you have it. Inside the card is one of Finlay's "definition" works - the double meaning of the "A REPUBLICAN CROWN" is joined with a quotation from Gerd Neumann about Callimachus the Greek poet of the disappearance of a capital which reads like word salad. You can take from the above that this is not my favourite of cards.

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01 Aug

Posted at 14:52h in Artist's Postcards

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1981
11.5 x 21.5cm, 4pp. One of Finlay's "definition" works - the word RIPPLE is defined as a small, often dark-blue fold or dent resembling a wood-chip. Will float on fresh or salt water in all light airs. The paper used here is a turquoise (possibly more green than blue) and the definition is the only text on it inside. The "dent" or "fold" referred to presumably indicated the fold in the paper here (there is no other reason for the paper to be folded otherwise). The fold also hints at the way a boat bottom is shaped to allow floating. VG+.

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01 Jun

Posted at 15:56h in Artist's Postcards

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1981
11.5 x 15.5cm, 1pp. two quotations placed against each other for humour and also making the point that classicism is not dead and is an important theme of civilisation:
"In the back of every dying civilisation sticks a bloody Doric column" - Herbert Read
against
"In for foreground of every revolution invisible, it seems, to the academic stands a perfect classical column" - Claude Chimerique. Claude Chimerique is in fact a spoof figure so the quote is in fact Finlay's response to Read.

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07 Apr

Posted at 17:45h in Artist's Postcards

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1981
13.8 x 90cm, 1pp. Gardner's drawing of the titular pillar box (a defensive position made usually of concrete in the second world war) suggests such a structure is needed as a posting box for the letters sent by Finlay and others during the Little Sparta War and other disputes.
On the reverse, there is a handwritten note from Sue Finlay to Harry Warschauer thanking him for putting her in touch with "NK" at Duck Soup, and for his gifts. She mentions that she (they?) are very busy due to changing an exhibition but also because of the "devastated garden'. A stamped and mailed copy but VG+.

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01 Mar

Posted at 17:20h in Artist's Postcards

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1981
3.6 x 11.8cm, 1pp. A drawing by Gary Hincks after Flaxman's drawing/print "Apollo and Diana discharging their arrows" from 1792 is updated where the landscape is now of a war time harbour for U-boats and also part of Albert Speer's "Atlantic Wall". Finlay refers to the U-boats as "classical" in his text and there is thus both a literary and a visual reference to The Odyssey. Moreover, the two gods are referred to as "an Allied air raid is in progress" (the original Pope quotation has "They Bend the Silver Bow with Tender Skill and Void of Pain the Silent Arrows Kill"). The story of how the children of Niobe were killed by APollo and Diana because of her fertility-shaming of their mother for only having two offspring is turned into a story of revenge against the Nazis. VG+.

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17 Mar

Posted at 09:09h in Artist's Postcards

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, n.d. (c. 1980)
16.2 x 22.9cm, printed envelope content of a selection of two artist's books (Woods and Seas, Two Billows) and four artist's cards (Snowbark, Birch-Bark, Cytheria and ARBRE (TREE))- while thematically about "woods and seas" as per the title the selection seems a little random and possibly simply filled with items from the Press that Finlay had many copies of (Two Billows was also bound into another publication about artist's books so one guesses over a 1,000 would have been needed to fulfil all those publications and to be a stand alone book which is almost three times Finlay's most common print run of 350). These items are all described elsewhere on this site so this entry is for completeness really. All VG+ in like envelope.

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14 Sep

Posted at 22:27h in Artist's Postcards

Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, n.d. (1979)
7.8 x 24cm, 4pp (asymmetric fold). The typography by Ron Costley sets the three words together to form an unitary text. Elsewhere Finlay has used these exact trio of words together to describe the shallow fast moving water of a stream - but now the white on blue lettering gives a different meaning - the bark or outer layer here is the foam on the top of waves with the (deep) blue water beneath it. A visual poem.
Finlay also produced a much larger silkscreen print of this werk.

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14 Aug

Posted at 22:17h in Artist's Postcards

Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, n.d. (1979)
5.5 x 13.5cm, 1pp blue on white card. The words Snow and Bark are both given definitions with on the left hand side the order being Snow then Bark. That combination of the words and definitions together conjure up an image of a white boat (possibly in snowy weather). On the right when reversed (so that the words read Bark then Snow) then the image is of a different ship - a wooden boat.
Both snow and bark can be names of types of boats.
A typical Finlay word picture - a poem created by combinations of double meanings. VG+.

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14 Aug

Posted at 20:08h in Artist's Postcards

DUnsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, n.d. (1979)
15.8 x 3.6 cm, 1pp green on white card/bookmark. The text is a list of words associated with a tree including mythical beings such as a Dryad, insults to the trunk - carved "initials", and ways of considering the tree as a person - heart. The long column of words of course also reflecting the shape of the tall tree. Arguably an object multiple as much as a postcard but we have decided to retain it in the artist's card section. VG+.

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09 Aug

Posted at 17:34h in Artist's Postcards

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, n.d. (1979) 15.8 x 3.6cm, 1pp bookmark - the first edition of this small paper multiple which lists various words associated with trees in a column with the placing of each word relative to the physical structure of the arboreal structure. The bookmark was reprinted by the Morningstar Press, VG+. ...

14 Jun

Posted at 22:32h in Artist's Postcards

Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, n.d. (1979)
10.5x 15cm, 2pp. A typographic version of Finlay's earlier Wave work in which a word is transformed by the letters being re-ordered. But additionally this is a dialectic with "wave" being thesis, "solitary Wave" being antithesis and "great wave of translation" being the synthesis.
The "great wave of translation" also references the proof-reader's mark for transposition.

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