BLUE FLOWER. 1996.

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1996
14.7 x 11.5cm, 2pp. A colour image by Cornelia Wieg of carved names on a tree that has been rotated by 90 degrees to make the work seem abstract and somewhat like a photograph of a flower. This is one of three times this image is used in a Finlay publication - once as an editioned print, once as a card (here) and also on an announcement card for the print. There is a longer discussion of this work on the print entry in this cataloguing. VG+.

3 POSTS FOR A STREAM. 1996.

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1996
8.2 x 8.2cm, 8pp folding concertina card printed black on light brown. The three folds read:

LEAF & BOAT

BOAT & BARK

BARK & LEAF

Each recombination infers a different poetic image - the first the similarity between a floating leaf and a boat, the second the wood that makes up both boat and bark (bark peeled away will form a hollow structure) and finally the tree itself. VG+.

ENCHANTMENT. 1996.

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1996
10.2 x 5.2cm, 4pp folding card printed green and blue on white with the text reversed. The two inner folds read:

Faint,
Lingering
Under
The
Elms

and

Faint,
Lingering
Under
The
Eaves

Both poems have the word FLUTE made up of their first letters and this indicates that both poems should be associated with sound. The former with birds in the trees (the birds' home), the second with sounds in a home. Finlay finds both sounds "enchanting" and magical one assumes. A pretty card. VG+.

FRENCH SARDINE LUGGER. 1996

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1996
17.7 x 12.5cm, 2pp folding card with a watercolour by Janet Boulton after a boat model by Ian Hamilton Finlay identified as a "French Sardine Lugger". Boulton did a number of such paintings and Finlay seems to have enjoyed them. VG+.

3 FUNNELS. 1996.

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1996
13.2 x 16.5cm, 2pp card with a b/w photograph by Robin Gillanders of three toilet rolls that have been painted and place on a table such that the image looks like the funnels on a steam boat. VG+.

BRITTANY. 1996.

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1996
11.3 x 8.7cm, 4pp card with a drawing of women in a harbour Jo Hincks after M Denis printed black on brown.

BRITTANY
litany

The poem suggests that nothing much has changed in these Breton fishing villages, life is a repeating refrain. Finlay also quotes Caroline Boyle-Taylor on this "The painters felt that the peasants' lives had not changes since medieval times". Maurice Denis - the source for the original image - was one of the Symbolists and Les Navis who often documented small communities on canvas especially fishermen. VG+.

ROLLING HOME. 1996.

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1996
10.5 x 6cm, 4pp. A drawing of a butterfly on the wing by Jo Hincks. Inside is a poem:

ROLLING HOME

Over-
canvassed
Common
Cabbage
White

The Cabbage White is probably the most commonly seen butterfly. VG+.

TWO ONE-LINE POEMS FOR POSTIES. 1996.

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1996
15.2 x 6.7cm, 4pp. Inside the bright red card ate two one-line poems:

On the uneven road the bobbin red sail of the postvan

On the nearby bush the distant postvan's rose-

The colour is crucial here - both metaphors rely on the easily identifiable colour for a sale or a rose. VG+.

GULL. 1996.

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1996
9.5 x 9cm, 4pp. The front of the card has a line drawing of a part of a carburettor - the mechanism that mixes the fuel and air before combustion. It is not clear if this is for a model or not (but given the artist's interest in model then it seems likely). Internally Finlay creates a poem

Concentric Float Chamber Carburettor - top feed
gull

We suspect the metaphor here is the way seagulls open and close their beaks but in all honesty we are not sure. VG+.

GEE DEES. 1996.

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1996
10 x 13.9cm, 4pp. The front of the card has a b/w image of a model shop complete with a model boat. Inside Finlay lists imaginary places:

Atlantis, Xanadu, The Heperides, Tir-na-nOg, Arcadia
\ and below notes the name of a company that specialises in model making - Gee Dees.
The models are fantasies - perfect reproductions that are not quite real but imaginary perfect versions of their inspirations. VG+.

SOUTH COAST SAILS. 1996. TWO CARDS.

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1996
Two cards, both 6.8 x 7.6cm, 4pp. Both cards have the same text and only differ in colour - one light blue, the other cerise. The front of the cards both have SOUTH COAST SAILS printed vertically in three columns and then in the final column the letters of SAILS become the first letters of Sunset/Amber.Indigo/Lovely/Still. South Coast Sails are a company who supply sails to the boat trade. VG+.

L.E. LEARNER EDITOR. 1996.

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1996
14.8 x 10.5cm, 1pp. A symbolic image which represents a plate to be "worn on Andreas Muller's car" to suggest that he is a "Learner Editor". Finlay was upset by an article in Between Landscape Architecture and Land art by Udo Weilacher which Muller was the Architectual Editor for. VG+.

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