Ancient Italian LWB?

Aeric

I've owned a version of the AIT since about 2003. I was looking through it the other day and wondered about the LWB which I thought I'd long lost.

The old Tarot Passages site says that there was no LWB but a few extra multilingual cards with interpretations. How thorough are these, and are they based on Etteilla or Waite interpretations or different completely?

Would it be possible to obtain a photo or scan of the English card?

Also, I know there was a newer version of AIT released a few years ago, with snow-white backgrounds of the card fronts instead of the tan of the older version. Does this version come with a LWB or still the cards?
 

gregory

When you mention the newer version - was that the one called "Classical Tarots ?" I'll go look later; those two I have. I can scan the extra card, though. The Classical - as I recall - has "meanings" down the sides of the cards.

I quote from Lee's review on TP:
These are two reproduction decks published by Lo Scarabeo. Classical Tarots is a reproduction of a deck by Carlo Dellarocca, originally published by Gumppenberg in 1835, commonly known as the "Soprafino" deck. Ancient Italian Tarot is a reproduction of a late 19th century deck based on the same Soprafino designs.
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Also:
The two versions are relatively similar to each other. The Classical Tarots (the original Soprafino) is finer by far artistically, with much fine detail in the engravings. The deck has been recolored for this reproduction, with very pretty shades of yellow, pink, red, orange and green predominating, which make for a cheerful atmosphere. The Tower card, however, is slightly out-of-focus.

On the Classical Tarots reproduction, Lo Scarabeo has placed keywords in four languages running up the left side of each card. The keywords aren’t terribly well thought out, and I suspect most people will simply ignore them, especially people like myself who aren’t fond of keywords, although it might be interesting to try using the keywords as an easy way to interpret the pip cards. Fortunately the keywords are easy to ignore, since they run up the side of the card rather than being prominently featured on the top or bottom. Another positive feature of the keywords is that they enable one to tell whether or not certain cards are reversed, such as the Two, Three, or 10 of Wands, where it is difficult, if not impossible, to discern their orientation otherwise.

The Ancient Italian Tarot deck is a coarser version of the same pictures. The lines are thicker and less detailed. The deck has not been re-colored, and the colors are darker. There are some cards where red areas have bled, for example The World. In the Classical deck her lips are red, but in the Ancient Italian deck it’s just a blotch of red on her mouth. There are a few differences in the drawings, but no significant ones. The pip cards in the Ancient Italian contain Arabic numerals, whereas the Classical pips have roman numerals. For the entire suit of Wands in the Ancient Italian deck it’s practically impossible to tell whether the card is upright or reversed, so if you read with reversals, you may want to mark the cards. However, if you look very carefully, you can see that the Arabic numbers at the top of the card are darker than those at the bottom, so you might be able to differentiate it that way.
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Aeric

Thanks, I must have confused the two. I see photos of the Ancient Italian deck, the 1880 Avondo Bros version (not the 1835 Soprafino/Classical Tarot), and wonder if its darker background was altered and cleaned up for newer printings. I must be wrong.

Thank you for the scan, I apppreciate it. It'd be good to know if the Ancient Italian's card exactly matches the Classical's words on the sides.
 

gregory

Here you go. Enjoy !
 

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