Vintage-style Marseille deck, looking for feedback (hoping to kickstart this summer)

Hooked on TdM

I stand corrected! :) You wouldn't happen to have online links to the history? I find it very interesting and I'm horrid at history.

I consider the suits as occupations yet another layer of meaning :) Tarot is like an onion lol

I would probably buy your deck as a collectors item but not read with it. The colours would just drive me nuts. Lol but I'm odd that way.

Looking forward to the finished product!
 

daphne

On stock, is there much call for exceptionally thick cards?

No, not so much, on the contrary. If very thick equals stiff cardstock, then many will not like it, as some flexibility is desired.

Myself, I dont mind if they are stiff, I dont riffle shuffle. Durability is more important to me.
I think stiff and very plastic (shinny) feeling would be a "no" for lots of AT-ers. I have in mind the never ending complaints about Mary-el cards or Truth Seeker Tarot (compared ironically with place mats). I like them, but about the stiffness or shininess my taste is in minority, so dont consider it.
Anyway, better on the thicker side than on too flimsy that you are afraid to use them.

Some great stock generally applauded is the one of Wild Unknown tarot. Thick but flexible (the deck pilled up is thicker then a "regular" LoS deck, for instance, which in my opinion has too flimsy cards, too thin, but a lot of people like it), coating preserves the papery feeling, nice weight in hands.

And I think there is a Marseille deck, Grimaud Ancien Tarot de Marseille ffrom 1976, if I remember correctly, with thick papery cardstok, thick deck when piled up. Also Rhenan Tarot de Marseille 1984 has think cardstock, but more shiny and flexible then Grimaud. I like them both.


I'm glad people seem to like the linen, since I prefer it, but it also looks more clearly modern so I was worried that would be problematic.

There is a linen deck that comes to my mind now, Deirdre of the Sorrows Tarot. It has a linen finish with a very delicate surface indentation. They make a gentle sound when shuffled, when cards slides onto each other, sort of whippy whisper.
 

spiralingcadaver

Hooked on TdM, sure. There's a lot of information to be found by doing searches, but it's all unfortunately a bit scattered.

A good place to start is searching for variants on the keyphrases "history of tarot playing cards," and generally speaking, sites dedicated to playing tarot tend to give some good introductory history because tarot is so much better known in English-speaking countries as cartomancy rather than a game. (Be warned, some tarot gaming sites get somewhat... resentful... of the prominence of cartomancy, so you might find some inflammatory stuff.)

Plain-old Wikipedia has a decently interesting article on playing cards in general, which features tarot, if you want some light reading that also doesn't take a lot of searching and dead-ends for scraps of info:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playing_card

If you're interested in getting very involved, the Tarot History forum is an interesting site that's out of my depth that I'd eventually like to come back to once I have a bit more info (not to say they're alienating, just that there's a fairly overwhelming amount of info there and, when I first approached it, I was pretty lost). http://forum.tarothistory.com/index.php

Finally, a bit of a commitment which I haven't been able to find at a reasonable price (it's out of print) is "A History of Games Played With the Tarot Pack: The Game of Triumphs", which, from everything I've read, is a spectacular source of information on history and cultures interacting with tarot, though obviously it's more focused on the historical/game side of things than cartomancy.



Daphne, that's good to hear, I had been thinking that, with the basis in historical games which tend towards heavy stock (and with a small/skewed sample group to compare decks, having only recently gotten involved in tarot), thicker cards might be popular. The 400 GSM paper stock we're leaning towards is going to be slightly heavier than regular decks (we were recommended the 350 GSM as what most printers approach the company looking to print tarot cards on), but not exceptionally so, and we liked the idea of it having a bit more heft to it, though I'm not positive how 1/20mm will change things, other than the whole deck thickness.

On linen stock, we only got about a dozen samples to look at (from one deck), so I don't know if it varies based on a given run, but the cards we got, compared to a standard Bicycle deck, are slightly lighter indentations, at slightly greater intervals (so, less density). I'd never really thought about the sound of shuffling, though- for me, it's always been more of a tactile experience.
 

spiralingcadaver

I've added the box art (with a preview of the trumps) to the first post, along with the design we'll be using for the back of the cards.

Also, I've posted some more in-depth notes on illustration and testing materials, here.
 

daphne

Hooked on TdM, sure. There's a lot of information to be found by doing searches, but it's all unfortunately a bit scattered.

After all that research, I guess you would write a good informative book for your deck.
It's always nice to have a book packed with knowledge and helps put things in perspective.
 

spiralingcadaver

Haha, thanks, but I think other people are way more qualified than I am to talk about the history of tarot (and the thought of properly citing that hodgepodge gives me flashbacks to some of the more frustrating parts of college).

However, I am planning on writing a little light-weight not-quite primer to accompany the deck, because the historical stuff is what got me interested in tarot in the first place, and a lot of this deck is about sharing some bits about tarot that haven't gotten the attention I think they deserve.

(Also, our kickstarter project just got approved, so there's just a little more fine-tuning left. Huzzah!)
 

spiralingcadaver

Not to shout, but...

The Kickstarter is live!

We're really happy to get this going, and I'd like to be sure to thank to everyone who contributed feedback on the project. We wanted to post here early as a thank you for all the support, so there are still plenty of earlybird pledge levels available.

We already have a few backers who found us right away, and were just notified that we're already a KS Staff Pick!

Our spiffy video has all of the Major Arcana, but I'll be sure to post the full set here, too.
 

Zipgun

Good Luck with your Kickstarter!
 

Joshua

Good luck, made my pledge and shared in a few other spots.
 

daphne

Yes, fingers crossed! I hope you will make it!