IAN HAMILTON FINLAY

ARTIST’S POSTCARDS

TYE CRINGLE FALL. 1972. CHRISTMAS CARD.

Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1972
25.9 x 11.4cm, 4pp Xmas card with the descending textL

tye
cringle
fall
shippon
parrel
carling
bitt
gooseneck
traveller
beam
tabernacle
manger
crib

The words "shippon", "manger" and "crib" are printed in red, the rest in black. A shippon is a cattle shed so the three red words relate to a visual poem of the Jesus birth scene. The other words all relate to ropes and knots or masts in sailing.
The placing of the words all left aligned suggest a mast on a ship. Finlay has referenced ships in the biblical story of the supposed virgin birth (the card "I See Three Ships" is one such example which takes its title from a festive carol) and the arrival of a ship seems to signify a welcoming or greeting of an event for Finlay. Of course the return or arrival of a boat in a fishing village would have such significance when every trip was a risk to the lives of the sailors and by extension the community.
Released as the annual Wild Hawthorn Xmas card the date 25 December is printed at the bottom of the card also in red. VG+.

DER TAG. 1973.

Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1973.
10.2 x 10.2cm, 2pp - with a drawing of a tug by Ron Costley. The drawing is accompanied by the words Der Tag in a Germanic script - the German word for tug.VG+.

Ron Costley

ESTUARY CUPBOARDS. 1973.

Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1973.
14 x 12cm, 4pp - with a drawing of anchored boats in a river basin with trees on the shore. The title suggests that the boats are little more than wooden storage units which one cannot argue with when they are left to wait their next journey. Drawing by Michael Harvey. VG+.

MICHAEL HARVEY

THE SEA’S WAVES. 1973.

Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1973.
11.3 x 18.7cm, 6pp - single white card printed on one side only. All in an unprinted custom folder. Typography by Stuart Barrie - the three panels read THE SEA'S WAVES/THE WAVES' SHEAVES/THE SEA'S NAVES. The three texts bring equivalence to the three images - the waves, the moving wheat and an unusual poetic image of the sea having a central part of a church. It is not obvious what Finlay means by the latter but it may be the wake of the ship left behind the moving boat. VG+.

TRIM HERE. 1973. YELLOW PAPER VARIANT.

Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1973.
8.9 x 11.5cm, 1pp - single folding sheet printed black on yellow. 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+. There were two variants of this item - one on grey paper the other on yellow. This is the latter.

TRIM HERE. 1973. GREY PAPER VARIANT.

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+.

MID-PACIFIC ELEMENTS. 1973.

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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TEA CARDS. 1973. OAPT/AFVT/MFVT.

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+.

Simon Cutts

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

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

Ron Costley

BATH ROUNDELS. 1973.

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+.

GEORGE OLIVER

HOMAGE TO POP ART. 1973.

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+.

HOMAGE TO VICTOR SILVESTER. 1973.

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+.