Did Pixie do the coloring of the RWS?

The printer would need to know the correct colors. For example, in the Fool the sky is yellow, and the sun is white, because of the color symbolism of what the sky and the sun represent. (Compare this with the colors in the Sun card.) I don't think the printer would have guessed this without directions, and to avoid ambiguity, it seems likely that they had colored drawings to work from rather than written instructions. It may have been otherwise, but this seems plausible to me.

roppo said:

The original size of the RWS illustration was 100mm x 173mm.

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Throwing that through a converter:

100 mm = 377.95 pixels = 3.937 inches
173 mm = 653.858 pixels = 6.811 inches

This means that the illustrations are roughly the size of the Giant Rider Waite deck - 3 7/8" x 6 13/16". So the idea that the original images are 12" x 18" or something larger is a lot of hooey! Painting something that small with a brush - no matter how good you are or how thin the brush is - is still an investment of a lot of time for 78 cards.

I thought that there were a few large-sized original canvases of the RWS deck still in existence. Or is that an urban legend?

Fire Cat said:

I thought that there were a few large-sized original canvases of the RWS deck still in existence. Or is that an urban legend?

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That may be urban legend - roppo - can you help us? Once again - Pixie may have produced a large 'painting version' of a design or two 'after the fact' (she did design posters and such - not of the RWS), but painting a large piece (like the actress is doing in the video 'Strictly Supernatural' discussed elsewhere) for each card would have sucked up a lot of time.

{off-topic - I know that Bill Greer painted a large version of each of the cards in the Morgan-Greer, because he has sold some of them on occasion, and like Pixie - has bitched that the printing process did a lousy job reproducing the colors he used.}

It's just my speculation, but considering that the Golden Dawn urged members to color their own decks, Pamela may have had a personal deck that was used as a key for the Rider Company. I'm probably off to some large degree, but it's all I've got.

Unfortunately, she hadn't reached the necessary grade, and ultimately she wouldn't ever reach it.

closrapexa said:

Unfortunately, she hadn't reached the necessary grade, and ultimately she wouldn't ever reach it.

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Interesting in the concept that here she is designing the deck for Waite and they are both in the GD, but she hadn't progressed 'far enough' to have gotten to be using a Tarot deck as part of her progression through the GD. Kind of like saying "Thank you for this beautiful automobile design, Pamela, it is now in production - but women are not allowed to drive!"

tarotbear said:

Interesting in the concept that here she is designing the deck for Waite and they are both in the GD, but she hadn't progressed 'far enough' to have gotten to be using a Tarot deck as part of her progression through the GD. Kind of like saying "Thank you for this beautiful automobile design, Pamela, it is now in production - but women are not allowed to drive!"

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Well, that's the way things are in many fields of study, although I agree it really is interesting. We probably know more about the deck than PCS herself, and it is a testament to her talent that she was able to make a fairly correct esoteric deck while working in the dark.

Sadly, later in her life she may have distanced herself from her creation, retreating as she did into the Roman Catholic fold.

She could have advanced in the grades if she wanted to. She may not have had much interest in the occult. Someone in this thread mentioned that she liked ritualism, which might be expected from her theater work, and this was later satisfied by Roman Catholic practice.

MacGregor Mathers didn't seem to be biased against women. After the disintegration of HOGD, he resurrected it as the AO, of which his wife Moina later became head until her death. According to his commentary on the Lovers, Waite also had a high view of women.

I could also well be that even though Pixie designed the deck and was a member of the GD - she may have had NO interest in the Tarot as a spiritual, occult, or (fill in the blank) quest. She did a lot of storytelling and incorporated all that Jamaican stuff - but she herself may have had no interest in reading the cards at all - much to the dismay of those who think she was some super-mentalist Tarot authority. It's not like she became a card reader (that we know of) just because she designed a deck.

Likewise, Bill Greer (of the Morgan-Greer) who was briefly a member of AT; he was an artist, not a Tarotist or an occultist. Members tried to engage him in discussions of the deck and he would have none of it since he didn't care about the cards ... he was paid to produce them, that was all. No in-depth, mind-blowing artist revelations were coming from him.