guala tarot restoration: suggestion needed!

I'm currently working on the restoration of a liguria-piedmont tarot I find particularly interesting. It is a tarot contemporary to the soprafino, but it looks far more primitive:
where the soprafino is lush and "operatic" the guala looks rough and naive,
I lsee the soprafino as the milanese upper society deck while the guala is more of an "osteria" tarot used by the local vineyard workers...

this deck was previously issued by LoS but I believe it to be oop. I own this edition but I really don't like it, wrong colours (too dark and saturated, with a yellowish overall tone) and useless subtitles.

I'd like to print that deck meneghello-style, similar to the soprafino... this is my first go at restorating, and I probably won't publish it commercially. But I guess this could be a great experience... my real goal iwould that of restoring the oldest piedmontese deck, the Ottone tarot (1736) but I haven't find the complete scans yet....

I've been working on the trumps so far... the color palette is still under examination. I dont expect to reach a philological trueness, however I have a clear idea of I want them to look like... light but not too bright...

I hope some knowledgable people in the forum would have a look at this, any suggestion will be truly appreciated!

here they are

http://img254.imageshack.us/img254/7506/trumps.jpg

Hi l'appeso,
you have access to a museum where it is a copy of this Tarot?

would be good to know that colors used, as it was painted, and to compare this deck with others of its era.

What year is the Guala?

unfortunately I haven't had the possibility of seeing it in reality... but it is a deck from Piedmont, circa 1840...

in fact my restoration is based on the previous edition, which really isn't a quality print...
I've tried to clean the scans from the printing dots and I've recolored some parts
the overall result isn't that bad, however the real job should have been done starting from a better source....

at least I'm hoping to get a few decent copies with good card stock to replace the LoS

this is just a trial, in order to learn how to properly restore a deck...

there are plenty of marseille-style piedmontese decks (mostly from Valsesia which is my place) worth of being restored, the oldest is the Ottone Tarot of Serravalle Sesia from 1736 with French titles and closely related to TdM I style. A modern fancy reproduction is the Fournier Spanish Tarot which I guess has been heavily modified (the pope & popess don't have any religious symbols, the pope is bare-headed and with a blonde beard!). the only existing copy of this tarot in in the Vitoria Museum but it seems difficult to obtain some high-resolution scans

yes, I know the Spanish Tarot,
estimate that the real Ottone, can be very interesting,
I knew of your interest for this, I read it in other threads.

Guala if you do not get caught, do not waste time,
going to Ottone, many hours it will save

Pardon if I sound rude, the Guala, made with love and passion can be a good work

you can even get a support in preserving a cultural heritage

you don't sound rude at all, I know that the Guala is something more of a tarot curio,
I'm doing this just for fun and to get a good experience, it's a sort of self-training

of course I'm also looking for some expert's opinion/advice...

the Ottone is a dream (or obsession I must say ), I've already contacted the museo fournier but no answer till now... I saw some cards in a thread here but I suppose the one who posted them (kenji I think) didn't have the whole deck scans... or maybe not?

I just found pictures of Kenji the Ottone

http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=68526&highlight=ottone

Yes, comparing the Ottone with Spanish, have little to do shapes and thicknesses of the lines between them.

about colors

one thing in my work which I can't decide for now is if I have to uniform colors.

I guess it's ok to have different shades of the same hue (for example lighter and deeper blue, depending on how accurately the card was finished -- but I wouldn't be so happy about having two different shades of blue, let's say navy and teal...).
In particular I found quite annoying the difference of hue for the background, from cream to gray... I decided for a plain white in that case. maybe the weathered feel should be added by choosing the right card stock...

most of my historical repros (heron conver, il meneghello tdM, krebs tdM etc...) simply don't bother about that and leave the colors different...

I'd like to have a nice historical deck but I'd also like to use it and too many colors just seem a bit confusing...

How are you getting on with the restoration? One thing I noticed on the LoS issue of the deck is that some of the pips are upside down (the stamp is the wrong way up) but if you are dispensing with the extra titles and formatting like LoS did then it won't matter.

I have been comparing some of the Liguaria-Piedmont decks in Kaplan's books and the Francesco Fantini version from 1870 is probably my favourite. Have you seen it?

I certainly agree with your assessment of proper colors for the deck. Too many colors would not be right, of course, since each separate color required a separate block be cut for that shade, and cost of production in medieval Spain worked the same back then as it does now.

I also love, at this historical distance, the slightly off-register color placements. I find them charming, even though I know that would have been considered an error at the time. I hope your restoration will include some of that quality.

Hope you're able to find a good museum-quality deck to get your colors from! The Museo del Tarot has a constantly growing list of titles; I'm sure you've inquired there.