HIGHLIGHTS. A HOMAGE TO ANDRE DERAIN. 1997. ONE OF ONLY 250 COPIES

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1997
15.2 x 21.4cm, 48pp plus green card covers with tipped on title label. Artist's book with twelve b/w photographs by Robin Gillanders of trees in Little Sparta where Janet Boulton had painted "highlights" directly onto the branches and trunks and Gillanders photographed them on very dull days when there were no actual reflected highlights other than the paint. Each set of three images of each tree gets closer until the last close-up.
In this sense the work is similar to the Fauvist treatment of nature with colour and bright paint highlighting parts of nature - hence why this is a homage to Derrain who with Matisse founded the movement. One of only 250 copies. VG+.

ECHOES SERIES. HIDING/PRESENCING.

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1995 11 x 8cm, 8pp plus card covers. Artist's book with two poems by Finlay that share a similar structure:

willow
dogwood
daylily
azalea


hiding



and



daisy
foxglove
harebell
dog-rose


presencing



The first list of plants are all cultivated, the second list is made up of plants that are usually regarded as weeds or wild. Finlay in a note directs us to C.R. Carswell's Life of Robert Burns, page 452 - where while Burns is dying:

"And though it was too late in the year for some of his favourite plants to be in blossom, she and the boys found daisies and foxgloves and harebells and some late dog-roses." which account for the second list of flowers. VG+.

HULLS 1/HULLS 2. 1998. IN ORIGINAL CARD SLIPCASE.

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1998
11 x 10.8 x 2cm card slipcase content of two volumes - both 10.5 x 10.6cm and unpaginated. Printed card covers. The first volume consists of the names of boats followed by unprinted coloured pages such that the painted colours of the actual boat are displayed serially. The second volume follows the first in that the same boats are listed (without identification) but now with the words of the boat colours printed in a large font. The boat names are repeated at the end of the book. For some reason this is reminiscent of some Sol Lewitt books in its conception but it also recalls earlier Finlay publications that are often referred to as "kinetic" eg OCEAN STRIPE SERIES 3.
One of only 250 printed. VG+

VARIATIONS. 1998.

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1999
9.8 x 10.6 cm, 12pp, plus card covers and dust jacket. Content of 16 b/w drawings of knots used in netting by Gary Hincks- the subtle differences between them and the sequential way they are presented reminds one of the schematics of Sol Lewitt. The last pages of the book have a line by Finlay:

Variations on a Theme of Diamonds
net

A one line poem which notes the shapes of the netting as the ropes are pulled into diamond shapes. And the value of such nets to the fisherman.

A COLOURFUL LITTLE BOAT. 1998. SIGNED BY MILLS.

n.p. : Aggie Weston's, 1997 14.6 x 9cm, 4pp with card covers. There are two texts:

Fun and Colourful
this solid little sailing barge is designed to sail on bath and pond alike

a blurb from a toy company, and then,

Fun and Colourful
this solid little sailing barge is designed to sail on bath and pond and sink". The joke is a visual one, a photograph taken by Rodger Brown shows a small toy boat which has turned over in a sink (sunk).
A joint work with Stuart Mills, this example is signed by Mills on the last page. VG+.

CAMOUFLAGED FLOWERS. 1998.

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1998
11.3 x 9cm, 20pp with card covers and printed dust jacket. Five drawings of warboats by Gary Hincks show the battleships with their varying camouflage paints. Below each is an anagram of each ship's name (all named after flowers) which by the jumble has "camouflaged" the names. Finlay kindly gives the answers to the anagrams at the back of the book.
One of 250 copies. VG+.

PROEM. 1998.

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1998
15.4 x 10.4cm, 10pp, leporello printed one side only with grey boards and tipped on title label. The book reproduces four b/w simplistic but dramatic drawings by Gary Hinks of the prow of a boat - BCK35, a modern fishing boat from Buckie in the Moray Firth named CALEDONIA III.
The title is a neologism made up of two words - Prow and Poem - and the drawings show various abstracted views of the boat's prow. The beauty of that curve appears to have attracted Finlay's attention as well as the coincidence of Poem/Prow.
Finlay also published prints and cards using Hincks' drawings. This is a VG example of a rather lovely book.

HINTS AND TIPS FOR BOAT MODELLERS. 1999.

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1999 11 x 6.4cm, 16pp plus card covers. Artist's book with 13 aphorisms based on model making. One such statement is

The smaller the boat the longer the journey.

VG+.

FLOWERS. 1999.

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1999
9.2 x 7.5cm, 12pp, plus turquoise card covers. Content of three codes for different types of flower used in a seed suppliers catalogue (all have only the initial of the word to identify them) below which Finlay has added three names of warships - all from the Flower Class of corvettes - where the names also start with the same letter.

MORE FLOWERS. 1999.

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1999
9 x 7.4cm, 19pp, plus turquoise card covers. Content of three drawings of flowers by Jo Hincks along with quotations about warships - all from the Flower Class of corvettes - found in a book by Preston & Raven from 1942. Each quotation gives the drawing its subject - for instance:

Anemone, Bluebell
Ships with
original
sheer and flare.

5 X 1. 1999.

Barcelona: Joan Miro Foundation, 1999
16 x 11cm, 48pp, with black boards and tipped on title label. This book accompanied the exhibition "Variations on Several Themes' and is identified often as an exhibition catalogue but this is incorrect - it is an artist's book in itself.
The first pages of the publication have a new concrete poem which is based on Christina Rossetti's devotional works, and Eugen Gomringer's Constellation form of visual poetry. The words boat, net, wind, fire, vine, flock, sun, lamb are recombined in different placings to create five different imagined scenes.
At the back of the book there is an essay by Thomas A. Clark in English who points out that the structure of the poem is from Gromringer's 5 mal 1 konstellation' and the words used are from Rossetti's "Letter and SPirit". That essay is better than I can write here so we shall leave this here although we will point out that in the late 90s religion as a subject begins to be more apparent in Finlay's work.
We have re-classified this book as an artist's book and not just a catalogue

VARIATIONS. 1999.

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1999.
29.5 x 14cm, 12pp plus cards and printed dust jacket. Artist's book with a poems by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and it's English translation by Samuel Taylor Coleridge which have linocut illustrations by Jo Hincks and then a variant on the poem by Finlay where the original poem's landscape is replaced by a scene of boats (which are blue lemons):

Do you know the land where the blue lemons ride
A silver fountain springs from the vessel's side?
There, in the stern, the orange net-floats glow,
The brown sail shifts, the salt winds gently blow.
DO you know it well, that land, beloved friend?
"Thither with thee, O, thither would I wend!"

The poem also is a thought of death and heaven. FInlay's version is also illustrated by Hincks - making the boat references more obvious (the fountain for example is the bilge water spraying out)>
VG+ example.

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