A visit to Little Sparta,
Ian Hamilton Finlay's
garden near Dunsyre,
12th September 2005
[Click on the thumbnails to view larger photos]
"AZURE & SON"
Sundial, c. 1970, at Biggar on the road to Dunsyre. The text reads:
AZURE & SON
ISLANDS LTD
OCEANS INC
Stone plaques with coloured inscriptions at Little Sparta:
|
1942 |
A DRIFT |
(These two works are part of a group of works involving the 2nd World War "Flower Class" corvettes, convoy escort ships. "HMS Alyssum" was supplied to the Free French Navy and re-named in French. "Loosestrife" and "Pink" were presumably moored adjacently, as they might be planted in a garden.)
A modern aircraft-carrier stands in for a classical stone altar. The inscription cites, rather obliquely, the Greek philosopher Chrysippus's assertion that Gods may be known to exist on account of their altars.
Louise Milne, Harry Gilonis and David Bellingham.
Stone planter, 1980
FABRE D'EGLANTINE
The French revolutionary Fabre, who re-named himself after the rose, was the deviser of a new French revolutionary calendar, which likewise had evocative, often pastoral, terminology.
One of a set of three stone tablets, c. 1970, bearing one-word poems.
THE BOAT'S BLUEPRINT
water
A stone bench, with an inscription reading
A SPRAY FROM A
BRETON SEA-HEDGE
THONIER
The fishing-gear on French tuna-boats, "thoniers", resembles sprays from a thorn bush.
Sundial, c. 1970. The text reads:
|
Poems |
The first half of the text is Paul Claudel; the second half, Finlay.
This very early work with the text
MARE
NOSTRUM
echoes the Romans, who named the Mediterranean "our sea" and also mimics the sound of sea-like wind-rustle in the leaves of the large ash the tree-plaque sits on, the only tree at Stonypath when the Finlays first moved there.
Inscribed wood bench, c. 1975
THE SEA'S WAVES THE WAVES' SHEAVES THE SEA'S NAVES
One of many Finlay works that link sea and land, in this case citing traditional etymological links as well as new metaphor - church "nave" comes from the Latin "navis" or ship.
Louise Milne among 'Homage to the Villa d'Este' in the Roman Garden.
My poor photo of Finlay's beautiful incised poem at least shows how far the trees have grown since it was first photographed...
|
SONG WIND WOOD-
|
Stone with a carved text, c. 1970
YOURNAME
A Lyme Ketch
A moment of whimsy with a boat registration form, perhaps, led to this piece of floating linguistic philosophy, embodied in an actual Dorset ketch.
PANZER LEADER
Two inscribed fibreglass tortoises, c. 1975. At one time there were real tortoises in the garden.
... and the other PANZER LEADER
An inscribed stone, c. 1990
THANATOS
OUR STONES
SUMMON YOUR MOSS
Thanatos is the Greek god of death, brother of Sleep and a son of Night.
VIRTUE IS HARMONY
The pun on this stone Pan-pipe is perhaps more Platonist, or neo-Platonist, than Arcadian (Pan lives in Arcadia, rough country north of Sparta).
A 'wild pebble' from the 1970s, one of a series. The pink "pink" flower sits
adjacent to the sea-blue "sea":
SEA
pink
The Kailyard
(Cf. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. 4th ed. 2000: "Scots kailyard, kitchen garden. Kailyard is also used to allude to an unrealistically sentimental and couthy [i.e., comfortable] picture of Scottish life similar to that which the writers of the Kailyard School ... often display [:] The decayed romanticism of tartanry and kailyard.")
Three Bee Hives, c. 1995.
Each carries the port registration letters and numbers of the fishing-boat whose name they bear: Bountiful UL 238, Sweet Promise FH 172, Golden Gain FR 59 (the ports are Ullapool, Falmouth and Fraserburgh).
Stone obelisk on a lettered plinth
Veronica became Temptress
Hibiscus became Spry
Arabis became Saucy
Periwinkle became Restless
Calendula became Ready
Begonia became Impulse
Larkspur became Fury
Heartsease became Courage
Candytuft became Tenacity
These are some of the "Flower class corvettes", convoy escort vessels sold or given by the British Navy to the American Navy during World War 2. The ships were renamed along more American lines.
A stone bridge with an inscription:
ARCH, n. AN ARCHITECTURAL TERM, A MATERIAL CURVE SUSTAINED BY GRAVITY AS RAPTURE BY GRIEF.
One of many such dictionary definitions made by Finlay over the years.
A stone column, partially rusticated, with an inscription running against the normal display mode, as if aded after it fell (or was pushed over):
ARCADIA n. A KINGDOM IN SPARTA'S NEIGHBOURHOOD.
This redefinition draws on a scene in Goethe's "Faust" linking the equally "spartan" Arcadia with Sparta, its near neighbour to the south.
A dry-stone walling sheep-fold with lettered slate plaques:
ECLOGUE
FOLDING
THE LAST
SHEEP
The text draws on an earlier print collaboration with Laurie and Thomas A. Clark.
A plank bridge inscribed twice with
THAT WHICH JOINS AND THAT WHICH DIVIDES IS ONE AND THE SAME
A Heraclitean aphorism.
Three lettered posts standing in water.
The texts, from back post to front, are
STONY
STREAM
FRECKLED
FRESHET
PEBBLED
BROOK
Details of stone slabs atop turf "waves" on an undulating piece of lawn; these bear five different words for the same thing, the wave:
ONDA VAGUE WAVE WOGE UNDA
(shadows by Peter Manson, left, and Louise Milne)
As above.
A coloured concrete bridge lettered CLAVDI after the painter Claude Lorrain, one of the tutelaries of Little Sparta - c. 1980.
Another partially-rusticated column-plus-plinth, originally erected c. 1980:
THE . WORLD
HAS . BEEN
EMPTY . SINCE
THE . ROMANS
SAINT-JUST
- a reference to Republican virtue(s) eclipsed under millennia of monarchy.
Four black swans barely visible in the distance.
The Goose Hut, c. 1980
Wooden columns interspersed with heather "wattle".
Geese were defenders of the early Republican city of Rome; briefly they defended Little Sparta too.
"The Present Order", c. 1980
11 cyclopean inscribed stone blocks.
THE PRESENT ORDER IS THE DISORDER OF THE FUTURE SAINT JUST
(David Bellingham as S-J vigilante)
Thanks to Harry Gilonis for his invaluable help with the captions.
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