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

spiralingcadaver

The next two suits, with a few notes via link. Most notable was the removal of the "stains," as they were feeling artificial. Image links in the first post, as well.

Note 2: the 2 of coins will be getting new text due to a different translation
 

Debra

Yah, I like this better :) "Artificial" is what I had been thinking. Different from cardstock that has texture and color variations.
 

daphne

I like it, it looks very light, non-suffocating. The court cards are too small to see if they are expressive.

I hope you get it printed on a nice cardstok as such a deck deserves.
 

spiralingcadaver

Thanks!

debra, glad you like them, you and a couple others suggested removing the stains and we like them better without, too.

daphne, I'll be sure to get some close-ups of the court cards, I spent quite some time with trying to get a bit more life in them.

On card stock, this is actually something I've been struggling with a bit right now, since I just got the material samples for this deck:

Right now, they're on 350 GSM stock (compared to 300 GSM that regular-sized playing cards are on), we're planning to move up to 400GSM, but I'm not positive if this will make a notable difference.

I've seen card stock that is definitely thicker than what we're looking at, but it's either been extremely glossy (clearly reflect light sources), or low grade (easy to crease), so I'm not sure how practical heavier cards are.


The cards have a plastic gloss coat- to clarify, this doesn't mean shiny, they're more reflective than newsprint but substantially less reflective than even the dullest magazine I could find around, I think the treatment is the same used for most card games (like Magic the Gathering or nicer board games).

We also received linen coating, which is the style that traditional playing cards tend to have, with a faint "waffle" or fabric texture: the material is more durable (resistant to creases and stains) and better for handling cards (less resistance when shuffling, more grip). On a subjective level, we also thought it had a nicer weight, and looking at my old decks of cards, I actually like how they wear better (they tend to stain slightly instead of getting rough). We're considering using linen coating if we can afford it.


However, what are people's thoughts on material? Does anyone have an objection to linen coating? Alternatively, if anyone reading this has printed a deck, is there any advice you can offer?

Thanks!
 

Hooked on TdM

-The suits have more heavily consistent colors, with the swords & wands emphasizing blue, and the cups & coins emphasizing red, both in the dominant colors and in the shading hue. These match the respective regular suits of spades & clubs (blue instead of black) and hearts & diamonds.

First, I must say these are beautiful.

My deal breaker with this deck is the colours of the suits. Each suit represents one of earth, air, fire, water and physical, spiritual, emotional, intellectual. Each colour represents those aspects. Spiritual\air is yellow. Intellectual\fire is red. Physical\earth is green. Emotional\water is blue.

I read the suits as: Coins (deniers) as spirit\air yellow. Swords (epee) as intellectual\ fire red. Wands (baton) as physical\earth green. Cups (coupe) as emotional\water blue.

Now there are variations to what suit represents what. There are tons of threads in the TdM section on this. I've just written a simplified version with my personal preferences.

Also, I believe (and I could be very wrong so please research before taking my word) that playing cards came from Tarot. They are a simplified version. So using playing card suits to modify the tarot pips seems very off to me. Food for thought!

I hope that helps with your thought processes while creating this deck. I'll be watching this thread for updates. :)
 

spiralingcadaver

First, thanks!

On the elemental side of things, it's something I've a bit worried about, specifically because of your (type of) response on the matter.

As you quoted, they're originally based on the relationship of the suits in playing cards, however, I've done a bit more research since posting that.

The tarot suits are in fact derived from the Italian/Latin playing card suits from a couple centuries before the tarot deck was created, which were adopted from Egyptian ones. (While best-known as Italian, a few other European countries also used the suits.) The tarot suits employed fairly minor alterations, where the original suits has less ambiguity of form (the Coins were always called Coins; the Clubs were always called Clubs in the playing card decks).

You're correct that the French (i.e. poker-style) suits came later than the Italian ones (and were a synthesis of Italian and German suits), but it's unclear if they were invented before or after tarot (both first appear somewhat uncertainly in the 15th century), and, either way, they're very close in time, and it obviously took much longer to disseminate information and products in the 15th century.

On the reference of the suits, the older definitions are believed to be based on stations rather than elements:
Swords: military
Cups: clergy
Coins: merchants
Wands: agriculture

On the pairings of suits (regardless of color), I couldn't really find any information, though there are of course the traditional formal similarities between wands and swords, which I altered in this deck due to feeling they actually looked to (abstracted and) similar.



TL; DR
The above is mostly just some interesting information that I thought I'd share. However, coming back to your initial criticism over the suits and artificially applying modern concepts to a historical deck, I believe that applying the French color pairings which have been adopted in modern tarot playing decks and applying the elemental color relationships adopted in modern cartomancy are roughly equally anachronistic.
 

Thoughtful

Your cards are beautiful, love the light colouring, very calming. Also like your suggestion of linen finish. There is nothing worse l feel than highly glossed thick card but that's just my opinion. Your tarot is so lovely it deserves to have the best finish, the linen finish would be perfect and to have the size manageable, not too big, say 6.03cm x 11.11cm would be the cherry on the cake for me :)
 

spiralingcadaver

Hi, thanks, Thoughtful :)

We're pretty sure they're going to need to be the slightly larger standard tarot 70x120mm size, simply because custom cutting costs extra and I doubt we'd have the budget to add that.

On coating, I agree- I have a heavily glossy deck that not only has glare but also is harder to shuffle/handle because the glossy surface gives it a slight grip. I'm leaning towards the basic slightly glossy plastic coating being good as a starting point (because it's only a light gloss and that'll get worn with time), but, unless there's a definite opposition to the linen treatment, I expect the plan will be to shoot for raising enough to give the deck the nicer finish.
 

daphne

70x120mm I think it is a nice size for this type of deck, I like it.

Linen coating I find it a great idea, better then a heavily glossy deck.
I like decks that shuffles beautifully (shuffles like butter, it`s a very common saying here; an example for this feeling would be the Rosetta Tarot, only that one is too glossy for what you have in mind).
It might seem a minor detail, but for people using the decks good quality cardstock is something really important.
 

spiralingcadaver

Hi daphne, I'm not surprised at all- I've always been very aware of material and, with tarot being so tactile, it makes perfect sense that cartomancers/general enthusiasts would be concerned about material.

On stock, is there much call for exceptionally thick cards? 400 GSM will 5x the thickness of printer paper or about 1.3x the thickness of regular playing cards, if I did the math correctly.

On durability, the 350 GSM samples were tough enough to resist all but the most violent shuffling (actually smashing the cards together for about 20 minutes with the intent of damaging them) and bending (I could make the card ends touch each other without creasing, it took a very sharp angle to actually crease them). In short, I'm very confident on material from a practical standpoint, but want to be sure it also feels right.

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.