Little Sparta: Little Sparta Trust, n.d. (c. 2009)
23.5 x 18cm, 6pp (single folded card). Promotional leaflet for the Little Sparta trust given to visitors after Finlay's death. Colour images of the garden and grounds an a short text about the Trust. There is also a drawing of Little Sparta by Gary Hincks. VG+.
...
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+.
...
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 2000
8 x 17.9cm, 4pp artist's card with a landscape drawing by Gary Hincks. Internally there is a poem by Finlay:
THE OTHER WAY TO EDINBURGH
(Farmsteads, streams,
serious woods),
the rainstorm's portcullis
closes the view.
One of a number of such cards with detailed illustrations of poems, in the same dramatic style, by Hincks all published in the same year. Finlay's reference to the rainstorm's portcullis is the raging rain coming down in sheets that look like vertical lines on the horizon. VG+.
...
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1999
Original mailing box content of a 2 x 4 x 1cm, pewter faux "net marker" with the inscription "SP" and a 12 x 16cm, 4pp printed card. A Christmas gift (here to the art dealers and curators M+R Fricke, Dusseldorf). Net markers, traditionally made of wood or cork, were used to establish ownership of nets in fishing communities and in ports usually carved with the fisherman's initials (sometimes a monogram) or later, as boats and their crews grew larger, with the fishing numbers of the fisherman's boat.
The card has a drawing on it (by Gary Hincks) of five net markers with A, JS, JN, SP, A on them - these represent the first five of Jesus's disciples and there is a biblical quote - from Matthew 4: 'As he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother,...
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1999
14.4 x 10cm, 2pp, black on white artist's card. The drawing by Gary Hincks is of a memorial "grave" stone for Henry Vaughan which can be found in the Little Sparta garden. There is a Pilcrow (¶) at the top of the marker which Finlay explains the poet used in place of a title when certain poems were to be regarded as elegies. Clearly this visual poem is also an elegy for Vaughan.VG+.
...
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1999
12.5 x 9cm, 4pp card printed red on white. A line art drawing of rudder by Gary Hincks has the text: "A last word: Rudder" on the steering handle.
A rudder is, of course, the last element of a boat and, in terms of being the part that causes the direction of the vessel, also has 'the last word". VG+.
...
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1998
22.5 x 12.4cm, 2pp artist postcard with an abstract painting by Gary Hincks of a rudder with the pintles very apparent- the outer shape of the rudder shown in dashed lines. The wooden strappings (which add strength to the structure) are coloured and more apparent. Those strappings not only guide the wood on the rudder (in themselves causing directionality like the rudder) but also a maze like image where any path is guided by the blue bars. A visual self-reference. VG+.
...
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1998
9 x 15.2cm, 4pp (assymetric fold) artist's card printed orange black on white with a drawing of a "rusty corvettes at sea by Gary Hincks. This was one of the flower class battleships that were deployed in the second world war and hence Finlay notes it as a "rusted flower" - a mignonette which are often red in wet October. VG+.
...
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1998
8 x 10cm, 4pp artist's card printed black on grey with a drawing of a battleship by Gary Hincks
Inside the card Finlay notes the participants of the "Battle of the Flowers" in 1941/1942 - Loosestrife, Larkspur, Balm.
There were 294 "Flower-class" corvettes engaged in the second world war all of which had names of flowers, the first two here both were involved in the Battle of the Atlantic and the third boar was never actually commissioned - Finlay has this name noted as "(cancelled)". Finlay returned time and time again to this naming convention for the battleships in cards and prints because of its use of the names of a wide number of blooms. VG+.
...
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+.
...
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1998
18.5 x 9.2cm, 2pp artist's card printed brown and black on white with a linocut by Gary Hincks after Ben Nicholson's Brown with Little Squares. The linocut is similar to the original abstract work with its rectangular shapes but here the squares are fishboxes complete with the occasional boat reference number. This is the third of three cards published by the Press which takes the original work by the St Ives artist as a jumping off point. . VG+.
...
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1998
17 x 12cm, 2pp artist's card printed black on blue with a linocut by Gary Hincks after Ben Nicholson's Three Goblets. The linocut is similar to the original abstract work in that three rudders are shown overlapping in the design. A Coble is a North East English fishing boat with a long thin rudder which is reproduced here. This is the second of two cards with a very similar drawing was published at the same time in black on white. VG+.
...