Always on
This project successfully funded on 2nd June 2026, you can still support them with a donation.
Support our new book on artist Ian Hamilton Finlay
London, Greater London, United Kingdom
Aim
To enable publication of a beautifully illustrated book about Ian Hamilton Finlay's creative collaborations
The story behind the project:
Ian Hamilton Finlay (1925-2006) is considered amongst the most important Scottish artists and poets of the twentieth century. As a pioneer of concrete poetry, Finlay required craftsmen and fabricators of many kinds to realise language-forms across graphic and three-dimensional settings. His creative acquaintances included typographers, photographers, publishers, poets, visual artists, illustrators, prose writers, sculptors, woodcarvers, stonemasons, letter cutters, curators, gallerists, and more.
Many of these collaborators are still alive and are themselves significant figures within modernist art and craft movements. Moreover, their memories provide a priceless insight into the methods, character, and biography of a major contemporary artist. Including interviews and texts from over 30 of these collaborators, the new book 'Crafting Arcadia: On Collaborating with Ian Hamilton Finlay' will shed new light on Finlay as a poet and artist, a personality, a collaborator, a friend, and sometimes an adversary.
A little more about the book:
Rather than a monograph or biography, the book will comprise a curated group portrait, offering insights and perspectives untapped by other significant books on Hamilton Finlay's practice. It will be a beautifully designed hardback publication of 176 pages, trimmed page size 250 x 190 mm, with full-colour illustration throughout.
This book will appeal to scholars and students of modernist and post-modernist art and literature, enthusiasts of contemporary Scottish culture, as well as to general readers interested in landscape design, gardens, crafts and learning more about a singular creative life and body of work.
Testimonial:
'Ian Hamilton Finlay is a towering figure in European art, with Little Sparta his ultimate monument to his perspective on life and art. But despite its richness and complexity, it also offers an opportunity to think more intimately about generosity and exchange. The exchanges Finlay had with numerous fellow travellers, experts in their own art and craft, is what this book is about. The myriad conversations, experiments and tests, the failures and successes that built up over decades, flowering into something beyond a single person; more a community of practices directed towards a shared goal. Greg Thomas has the trust of the artistic and literary community around Finlay and is the perfect person to be writing a book that will reveal this under-appreciated network.’ - Andrew P Patrizio, Professor of Scottish Visual Culture, Edinburgh College of Art and the University of Edinburgh
A little more about the Author:
Greg Thomas is a critic, poet, and artist based in Glasgow. He holds a PhD from the University of Edinburgh, where he also completed a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship before embarking on a career as an independent scholar and journalist. He is an expert on the work of Ian Hamilton Finlay and the concrete poetry movement. His book Border Blurs: Concrete Poetry in England and Scotland (Liverpool University Press, 2019) provided the first account of the concrete poetry movement in Britain and included a chapter on Finlay. His new selected edition of the concrete, visual, and sound poetry of Edwin Morgan, A Home in Space, co-edited with Julie Johnstone, is forthcoming from Reaktion in 2026. Greg writes regularly for art magazines and websites including Art Monthly, ArtReview, Burlington, Scottish Art News and many others.
A little more about the Publisher:
Lund Humphries is the publishing imprint of the Lund Humphries Foundation for Visual Arts, a UK registered charity (no. 1211237) established in December 2024 to advance knowledge and appreciation of the visual arts for the public benefit.
The Lund Humphries Foundation for Visual Arts supports the research, production, publication and public understanding of art, architecture and design. Building on Lund Humphries’ legacy as a leading art-book publisher since 1939, the Foundation’s work depends on partnership and shared investment in knowledge that would not otherwise be accessible. It supports artists and architects, historians of art and architecture, and art institutions by ensuring that important subjects are documented, interpreted and brought into the public domain in a durable and authoritative form.
The Foundation was established in response to reduced public funding of the arts and a challenging market for sales of specialist books in which serious Visual Arts publishing is increasingly difficult to support commercially from sales income. As a publisher, we operate a non-profit model, seeking external funding to cover the upfront costs of our books, which include project development, copy-editing, proofreading and indexing, design and repro, printing and binding. The net income from book sales is applied to offset our operating costs.
Your support:
This is an important work of research which needs your support. Given the subject-matter, great attention will be given to the design and production of the book. To cover the book's production costs (copy-editing, proof-reading and indexing, design and repro, printing and binding) we are seeking to raise a total of £13,000 through a combination of crowdfunding and grant applications to charitable foundations, with a target of £5000 for this crowdfunding campaign. Your support will enable this important record of Ian Hamilton Finlay's creative collaborations to be made available to the general public at an accessible price.
Please help! The names of all supporters will be gratefully acknowledged in the book, and once the crowdfunding campaign has closed, supporters will receive a code for advance purchase of the book at a special 30% discount.
Header image photo by Robin Gillanders.
Funding method
Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made