Artist's Postcards - Unoriginal Sins

28 Aug SCHIFF*. 1974. ONE OF 350 SIGNED & NUMBERED COPIES.

Posted at 15:58h in Artist's Postcards

Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1974.
12.7 x 77cm, 8pp. Artist card which opens out to show a calligraphic design using the German word for ship (Schiff) which is printed black and blue in reflection to give the impression of a boat on water (with the fold being the water level). A lovely graphic by Ron Costley who was one of Britain's greatest typographers and one of Finlay's longest lasting collaborators. One of 350 signed and numbered copies. VG+.

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12 Aug “A CALM IN A TEA-CUP”. AFTER KATE GREENAWAY. 1973.

Posted at 16:05h in Artist's Postcards

Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1973.
16.5 x 13.5cm, 4pp. Artist card which shows a painting by Richard Demarco after a well known and loved slightly kitsch painting by Kate Greenaway of the same title that shows two young women cavorting in a tea cup. Finlay has had Demarco replace the women with a sailing boat (a calm). The Greenaway is a joke based on the saying "storm in a tea cup". This is a hugely popular card by Finlay which appeals to many who have no idea of any other work by the poet. VG+.
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20 Jul LANDSCAPE/INTERIOR. 1973.

Posted at 16:11h in Artist's Postcards

Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1973.
8.8 x 19.3cm, 2pp. Artist card with two drawings by Torok which consists of a pink and blue rectangle with horizontal lines denoted as landscape. The second square has the same colouring but has vertical stripes and is labelled Interior. The latter being an image of wallpaper and the former horizons and fields. VG+.

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06 Jun WILD HAWTHORN WEAPON SERIES. 1973.

Posted at 16:14h in Artist's Postcards

Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1973.
10.2 x 14cm, 2pp. The first of Finlay's cards to feature the Oerlikon cannon (in a painting by Susan Goodricke which gives the weapon a charming air of romance). The name of the gun is altered to O'Erlikon under the image. VG+.

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16 May MOWER IS LESS. 1973.

Posted at 15:49h in Artist's Postcards

Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1973.
10.5 x 15cm, 2pp. A card which has the title text in green on white in a cursive font. A simple pun about cutting grass is also a comment on minimalism - of which this card is an example. VG+.

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16 Mar HOMAGE TO VICTOR SILVESTER. 1973.

Posted at 16:20h in Artist's Postcards

Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1973.
11.4 x 13.8cm, 2pp. Blue and black on silver - a plan of barrage balloons and torpedo nets in a harbour from the last world war is titled as an homage to Silvester - a famous 1930s dance band leader. Visually the barrage balloons and ships look like some of the dance charts with footsteps that taught amateurs how to do popular moves. VG+.

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16 Feb HOMAGE TO POP ART. 1973.

Posted at 16:26h in Artist's Postcards

Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1973.
10.5 x 15cm, 2pp. Green on white with three drawings by Sydney McK. Glen of a cube, an ice cream cone and an ice cream wafer. Below is a quote "Treat Nature as the Cube, the Cone and the Slider" ( a slider is a Scottish way of referring to a ice cream wafer - there is a rich vernacular around the ice cream van including "oysters", "pokey hats" and thankfully lost mildly racist names such as "blackman", "double blackman" for chocolate wafers. The original quote is from Cezanne - "Treat nature by the cylinder, the sphere, the cone, everything in proper perspective so that each side of an object or a plane is directed towards a central point."
Finlay calls this an homage to pop art - probably because of the use of ice cream imagery matches the interest in day to day common objects in that art movement.
A lot of Finlay's 1970s cards are humorous in content - some what different from his usual stern and serious image. They are not his best work - they amuse for a moment or two but earlier and later works are probably better. VG+.

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16 May BATH ROUNDELS. 1973.

Posted at 16:38h in Artist's Postcards

Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1973.
10.5 x 14.8cm, 2pp. Artist's card a photograph of a model airplane by George Oliver. The model by Finlay is a biplane with floats and is floating above a sink of water with the plug in as if it has just landed.
The decals on the model are British roundels - the circular blue, white and red symbols that indicated the plane was a British fighter. The shape of the plug is very similar to the roundels and hence in its own way might be regarded as a decal. Hence the plug might be regarded as a bath roundel. VG+.

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07 May COPYRIGHT. 1973. ONE OF 300 SIGNED & NUMBERED COPIES.

Posted at 19:29h in Artist's Postcards

Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1973
7.9 x 11.3cm, 6pp single folding card which opens to 11.2 x 34.3ccm. The front of the card has the word COPYRIGHT and once the card is opened the drawing by Costley of a steamer has a red C on the funnel - a symbol that means "copyright". A company brand symbol used to indicate others had copied the boat. This is one of only 300 such card printed - each is numbered and signed by Finlay in ink.VG+ example

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18 Feb TEA CARDS. 1973. OAPT/AFVT/MFVT.

Posted at 16:48h in Artist's Postcards

Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1973.
Three different cards - all 10.5 x 14.8cm, 2pp - each with a typographic design on the front with only the respective initials O.A.P.T./A.F.V.T./M.F.V.T and coloured backgrounds grey, mustard and blue. The initials stand for OLD AGE PENSIONERS TEA - and is allocated as for Simon Cutts, ARMOURED FIGHTING VEHICLE TEA and MOTOR FISHING VESSEL TEA both claimed for Finlay himself. A trio of related cards which are collectively designated by Finlay as "Tea-Cards" which recalls the small collectible cards found in tea packs as promotional items in the first half of the 20th century. One suspects a number of in-jokes between Finlay and Cutts are represented in these cards. VG+.

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30 Jan MID-PACIFIC ELEMENTS. 1973.

Posted at 16:57h in Artist's Postcards

Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1973.
8 x 11.5cm, 10pp - single folding sheet printed on one side only. An accordion folded sheet that opens out to five b/w vintage photographs from the Battle of Midway. The first image is of planes leaving the US fleet to attack the Japanese but the next four are of explosions which Finlay has designated as Fire Water, Shell Fire, Samphire and Ise. The reference is to the classical belief in four elements Earth, Fine, Air and Water - a theme that the poet expanded in other later works. VG+.
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28 Jan TRIM HERE. 1973. GREY PAPER VARIANT.

Posted at 17:02h in Artist's Postcards

Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1973.
8.9 x 11.5cm, 1pp - single folding sheet printed black on grey. The drawing of a boat is above various lines representing the water level and waves. the instructions indicate ways of manipulating the card - Trim here, score here, fold here but the joke is that the boat is the type called a Trim. VG+.

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