Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1986
18.2 x 14.1cm, 1pp Artist's card with an appropriated image of the dead or dying Marat on his deathbed with a sword labeled "I was published by Jonathan Cape" hanging like the sword of Damocles as a threat above him. The original David etching from which this was taken is used as a threat or suggestion of how the publishing house might be found following their fall out with Finlay. VG+.
...
Leeds: New Arcadians, 1986
21 x 15cm, 44pp plus wrappers. A single number of this poetry and literature review - here dedicated to a long essay (by Finlay) explaining the background to the Little Spartan war. B/w photographs throughout. While a number from a journal we regard this as an artist's book. VG+.
...
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1986
Original printed folder 64.5 × 42.5cm, content of nine poster prints, each of 64 x 42cm, 1pp. A colophon/title page is joined by eight textual sheets with quotations from the speeches of Louis-Antoine Saint-Just, interspersed with aphorisms by Finlay composed as "Imaginary Speeches for the revolutionary". The portfolio was published on the occasion of the exhibition "L'Art et le Sacre Aujourd hui" at the Cistercian Abbey in L'Epau, France, where the texts were intended to be installed on four columns inside the abbey building. During the heroic anti-clericalism of the French revolution the Abbey was transformed into something far more useful - an agricultural outbuilding surrounded by gardens.
This is both a print portfolio but also a proposal for an architectural installation - hence we have placed it in the the appropriate section here which in fairness to Murray he also places it as 6.20.
...
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1986
27.5 x 50.5cm offset lithograph folding print in original printed folder. The drawing of a landscape by Gary Hincks is printed in such a way that the unfolded card reveals a proposed large public sculpture - an optical illusion of a "vase" shape cut out from a wall with "JJR" painted bottom left. The cut-away allows more of the wild landscape to be shown. Limitation not known. VG+ in like folder....
Firenze: Zona Archives, 1986 10.5 x 15cm, 2pp. Artist postcard released on the occasion of the series of “Secret Events” created by Maurizio Nannucci and including work by Ian Hamilton Finlay, James Lee Byars, Daniel Buren, Terry Fox, General Idea, Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Sol Lewitt, Maurizio Nannucci and Lawence Weiner for Nannucci’s Zona Archives. VG+. Scarce....
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, n.d. (c. 1986)
12.8 x 10cm, 1pp. Artist's card which has a text with typography and small drawings by Mark Stewart printed red on brown. The text is "The difference in a house by Voysey and a house by Lutyens is that the lobby of the former holds a toy spade and a minnow-net and that of the latter a fishing rod and a gun."
Voysey was heavily influenced by art nouveau whereas Lutyens was more practical and his houses more suited to the modern era he lived in.
This card is not found in Murray or in the online (limited) Wild Hawthorn Press listings of cards. One the back of this one is an extensive ink note from Sue Finlay to Victoria Miro asking for more copies of the invitation card (we believe the A David cards), mentioning how hot Italy had been and wishing the show to go well. Fromt his we date this card to be around 1976 and have placed it thus. VG+. Rare.
...
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1986
5.1 x 5.1cm, 4pp folding card with a drawing of nettles by Stephanie Kedik, printed black on light olive paper with the following poem on the left inner fold:
The pears
and frets
of nettles
VG+. Scarce.
...
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1986
23 × 18cm, black on grey printed outer folded with title content of two 23 × 18cm offset lithographs. The first is printed on light mustard-yellow paper and has the sole text "glades of sunlight" at the top and the second "forests of cloud" at the bottom printed on brown thick paper.
One of Finlay's innovative colour paper prints where the medium utilised is as important as the words found upon the page. This is a visual poem in some sense that the paper colours suggest that scene of sunlight breaking though the fog (the bright yellow paper is placed in front of the dark brown sheet in the folder and is more dominant to the eye.
This is one of only 150 such prints printed. VG+.
...
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1986
41.5 x 24.0cm, blue, red and black on white offset lithograph with a drawing by Mark Stewart of a porposed monument to celebrate the martyr Bara "the little drummer boy". Bara had been killed trying to squash the anti-revolution Vendée war and was killed by royalist counter-revolutionaries, supposedly while he was shouting "Long live the Republic!". His body was interred at the Panthéon along with other national heroes.
Clearly the Pantheon was not enough as Finlay proposed this bandstand which has architectural details that look like the side drum carried by Bara and a huge republican cockade.
One of 300 printed. Slight marking (early foxing?) to the white paper at top edge else VG.
...
London: Country Life, July 18 1996
31.5 x 23.5cm, 96pp plus original wrappers. A single number of this popular journal which has 4pp (mostly of large colour photographs by Clive Boursnell) of Little Sparta and an article by Alan Powers. The cover of the magazine also show the Present Order is the Disorder of the Future work in situ in the grounds of the farm. Slight wear to wrappers else VG+.
...
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1986
9 x 10.5cm, 4pp folding card with a line drawing of a pear by Stephanie Kedik, printed black on light brown with the following texts on the left and right inner folds - on the left::
very fine
late cherry
and on the right:
fine later
large pear
The references from from Thomas Jefferson's Garden Book that lists his activities in two different gardens during the 1766 to 1824 period (the gardens it should be noted, in a great part, had their upkeep from slaves). Finlay's texts remind the reader of the physical similarity of the two plump fruits but also they differentiate the two gardens of the President's life - in fact the first entry in Jefferson's diary is a description of his cherries and, later, he he writes about a 'Seckel Pear' at Monticello (his second house) claiming this variety "exceeded anything I have tasted since I left France, and equalled any pear I had seen there." The two poems therefore also represent the young and the old life of the gardener. VG+. Scarce.
...
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1986
7 x 7cm, 4pp folding card with a poem by Finlay based on a newspaper report on the repairs made to wells which gave the poet his last line.
wreathing of rockets<BR.
dusting of dreadnoughts
greening of gun-sites
parading of panzers
dressing of wells
The lines all describe war machines being camouflaged - a common theme in Finlay which is a momento mori - death can be found in beauty. VG+.
...