IHF Artist’s Books - Unoriginal Sins

BARGES. 2001.

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 2001
10.8 x 7.5cm, 16pp plus card covers and russet red/brown dust jacket with printed boat. Artist's book with six visual poems/amusing short texts by Finlay and drawings of barges by Gary Hincks.
Such as:
HOPELESS
Like looking for
a needle in
a stackie.

A stackie is a slang name for a working barge that usually carried cargo stacked up on its deck. Finlay has perverted for a joke the well known saying "Looking for a needle in a haystack." VG+.

Gary Hincks

DOMESTIC PENSEES. 2004. WITH HANDWRITTEN NOTE TO PAUL ROBERTSON FROM STUART MILLS.

Belper: Aggie Weston's Editions, 2004
19.4 x 13cm, 68pp plus boards and dustjacket. Place ribbon. One of the last books published in Finlay's life time which was based on collected aphorisms and one line poems taken from notebooks (blue jotters) in which he wrote down ideas and single lines. Edited by his friend and long time collaborators Stuart Mills and Colin Sackett. One of 500 copies printed. VG+.
JOINT WITH:
15 x 10.5cm, 1pp, compliments slip from the Aggie Weston press which has a lengthy handwritten note from Mills to Paul Robertson which talks about the enthusiasm for the book and how well it was received by the likes of the Tate Gallery. In original torn posted envelope.

Colin Sackett, Stuart Mills

THE BLUE SAIL. 2002.

Glasgow: WAX366, 2002
19.7 x 13cm, 64pp plus card covers. An anthology of poems by Finlay edited by Thomas A. Clark and published by David Bellingham. The works are often more traditional in format although some are concrete. VG+.

Thomas A. Clark

UNTITLED. c. 2005.

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, n.d. (c. 2005)
21 x 15cm, 1pp plus blue card covers which are metal spiral bound.
The text on the single page (printed on white card) reads:

SPIRAL BINDING
(PAGE TO COVER)

SPIRAL BINDING
(MAST TO SAIL)

Finlay is comparing the physical form of the book to the way a sail is bound to a mast.
This was not Finlay's first comparison of spiral binding to a sailboat - the work SPIRAL BINDING from 1972 consisted of shaped cards bound together to resemble a ship's sail printed with the boat's number. To our mind this is a cruder version of that work .
A note on date - we cannot find any reference to allow us to date this item accurately - we believe it to be one of Finlay's last artist's books and have dated it as 2005 but may be wrong.

SENTENCES. 2005.

Edinburgh: Inverleith House, 2005.
14 × 27cm, 32pp plus typographic green card covers. Artist's book with various textual works issued on the occasion of an exhibition where the same texts were printed on the walls of the gallery. It felt old - there was not much new in the show and it appeared a lazily curated affair. The book is similar - really an anthology of older work. It could be argued to be an exhibition catalogue but given the lack of commentary we have placed this as an artist's book albeit one that really isn't that great (the works are of course great but all having been seen before in other contexts). In less than one year's time Finlay would sadly be dead. One of 1,000 copies, VG+.

PIA MARIA SIMIG

A MODEL OF ORDER. 2009.

Glasgow: WAX366, 2009
19.7 x 13cm, 64pp plus card covers. An anthology of letters and texts by Finlay on "poetry and making" edited by Thomas A. Clark and published by David Bellingham. VG+.

EINSAMKEIT UND ENTSAGUING. 2001.

Little Sparta/Heidelberg-Berlin: Wild Hawthorn Press/ Kehrer Verlag, 2010
24.5 x 16cm, 112pp, plus pictorial boards. Photographic book contrasting Ian Hamilton Finlay's two major gardens, Little Sparta in Scotland, and Fleur de l'Air in France with 70 colour illustrations. VG+.

DICTIONARY FOR AN EXHIBITION. 2011.

London: Victoria Miro, 2011
9 x 12cm, 40pp plus card covers and printed label. Artist's book content of 18 "definition" works by Finlay.

"MILKY WAY, n. the celestial East-West axis."

This publication was produced for the London exhibition DEFINITIONS and was a limited edition of 250 copies. Clearly Finlay had died 5 years earlier so it's status as an artist's book is moot but we have retained the classification. VG+

A WALLED GARDEN. 2019. ONE OF 500 NUMBERED COPIES.

Tipperary/Saint Paulinus: Coracle & Saint Paulinus, 2019 18 x 24cm, 186pp and hand boards with applied colour illustration label. A posthumous artist's book explaining "the history of the Spandau Garden in the time of the architect Albert Speer". Speer was, of course, a Nazi who was jailed at the Nuremburg trials rather than condemned to death like his fascist friends and colleagues. The book is filled with quotations taken from Finlay's letters to Speer and watercolours of the prizon garden by Ian Gardener. It is a lovely publication if more than a little contentious. One of 500 numbered copies. VG+.

Ian Gardner

IAN HAMILTON FINLAY

ARTIST’S BOOKS