Ancient Italian Tarot

Le Fanu

Oh and as a bit of an aside....

Anyone want to see scans of one of my weird Ancient Italian decks with Scarabeo multi-lingual titles??
 

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sapienza

Le Fanu said:
I wonder how it is for those who already have the Classical and then go to the Ancient Italian? The opposite of what I did. If people keep raving and raving about a deck like we're doing here, there's bound to be a bit of an anti-climax!

Interesting. I wonder. I think with the Ancient Italian it's the 'feel' of the deck. Hard to put into words really.

I'm just home from my yoga class and when I was supposed to be relaxing and clearing my mind I was thinking of this deck, and believe it or not, I was wondering if you were still going to post scans of your deck with the titles? How weird is that. Thanks for the pics. Is it my imagination or do they look a little finer/crisper in that edition?
 

Debra

Le Fanu said:
Are you sure Debra? It would be very curious if you didn't. Why would they add them/take them out mid-production? Midway down the side between the original border and the Scarabeo "buffer" border? Five little blue dots...(mine also has Llewellyn on the box and c.2000)

Look.
 

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RiccardoLS

The solution of the puzzle, probably it's size.
Older LS decks were 60 mm large.
Newer size is 66 mm.

With historical decks it made a few problems.
Probably the small blue dots had been done to balance the image into a 66 mm card, without stretching or modifying the image itself.
You may find a few other graphical tricks on other decks.

As for the Ai with multilingual... I wonder what edition is that... maybe some Partworks thing.

Ric
 

SolSionnach

Debra said:
That's the one I have, too. It's an older version, the narrower one.

re:dots I thought you were referring to the sepia "stains" on the card images. Mine's copyright 1995. At one time I had another copy of this deck - the cards were the same width as my 1995 version... but the *box* was the size that LS decks are currently. I don't remember the copyright, and don't have the deck any longer.

I'd love to see a pic of the blue dot version. Ric's explanation makes good sense, as in the first repro, the cards were originally narrower.
 

Aerin

Le Fanu said:
Can anyone come to my aid and back me up and say - yes! - the Ancient Tarot of Bologna has five weird dots down the side?

Yes it does. I think they may be a border decoration style of thing. Or else there was once a blue border, but it got very scared of some mean border trimmers and ran round and round and round the card until BAM! It coalesced into some dots.

ETA: unless you are Debra, clearly. Thanks Ric for clearing this up.

Ok, maybe it´s off topic... Back to the Ancient Italian. Just for the record, this thread made me get mine out after lunch and do a card for the day. Such a wonderful deck...

It is beautiful. Is there anywhere that this and other historic Italian decks are listed in a full, comprehensuive kind of a way?

Aerin
 

Le Fanu

Debra said:

Thank you! No, I believe you! And you know another thing; your borders are MUCH paler than mine. My borders are more dark beige/ sepia (with blue dots). Yours are almost white.

(by the way, Sapienza, are you paying attention to this? Shouldn't you get yourself one of these before they become impossible to find? Still available at the book depository..)

Ricc... The Ancient Italian I have with titles is one of the Orbis/ Fabbris (?) collaborations, published in Portugal and Spain under the title "Tarot Classico, 1880" in a green box with the Star on the front...

ETA; bear with me; I shall try and post a scan of my Bologna with dots over the next few days...)
 

faunabay

Le Fanu said:
I wonder how it is for those who already have the Classical and then go to the Ancient Italian? The opposite of what I did. If people keep raving and raving about a deck like we're doing here, there's bound to be a bit of an anti-climax!
This is exactly what I'm wondering about myself. I"m not letting myself get all excited though, because alot of the time it's the first one you get that you connect with the most. I'll let you know how it works for me once I get the Ancient Italian. :)
 

sapienza

Le Fanu said:
(by the way, Sapienza, are you paying attention to this? Shouldn't you get yourself one of these before they become impossible to find? Still available at the book depository..)

ENOUGH!!!!! Oh help me! I can't buy any more. My bank balance is suffering from my recent obsessive historical deck-buying frenzy. Fortunately the Bologna doesn't appeal to me as much as some of the others. I'm sure I'll regret it one day but for now I'm going to have to have some self control and stop the buying madness :)

I'll tell you what I would definitely buy if one existed though.....a MINI ANCIENT ITALIAN :D Can you imagine? How fabulous would that be? Ric.....are you listening.....we'd all buy it, I'd even buy a couple. Oh well, I guess a girl can dream.
 

Aerin

Well, even better would be a little collection of mini- old Italian decks with a cute little book to go with them. In one box.

Aerin