Fantastic Menagerie Tarot - a few cards online

[tarantulacat]

The Hermit's a cutie!!!

The more cards I see, the more and more I fall in love with this deck.

Keep the cards coming!!

 

[baba-prague]

Is the World a dragonfly? This is an AMAZING deck! I've been saving my coupon for this! Now I just have to find it. I have OF COURSE lost the darned thing!

I adore my FairyTale deck, by the way!

Thank-you! I need to get on to those one-card draws with the Fairytale, the fortnight was up AGES ago. Bit of a reading backlog now, but I'll catch up.

But back on topic, here is a larger World for you (sorry, they are a bit small on the site, but otherwise it would take ages to load). I THINK she is a Mayfly, but I'm not certain. We wanted to get across the idea of things that exist for a very short time (such as the corn poppy in the background as well as the central figure of the dancer) but that seem to be utterly happy and/or utterly beautiful - perhaps partly because of the brevity. Like a feeling of ecstasy - it may last only a moment, but that doesn't matter.

Here she is:

 

[Lee]

Ughh, I just realized I misspelled "Grandville" in my post, I went back and corrected it.

That's almost as bad as when I misspelled baba's name in a review.

-- Lee

 

[baba-prague]

Ughh, I just realized I misspelled "Grandville" in my post, I went back and corrected it.

That's almost as bad as when I misspelled baba's name in a review.

-- Lee

Hah! My name gets misspelled all the time. I remember my mother once considered giving in and renaming the whole family MahonEy!

We will forgive you

Here by the way, is the dueling Two of Swords, as described elsewhere by Helvetica (but only just absolutely finalised by us - we had some difficulties fitting both figures into the card satisfactorily).

http://www.fantasticmenagerie.com/Gran_2Sw400.jpg

 

[Rosanne]

Dualism duelling- or maybe a duellist duet- I wonder who is logic and who is intuition? I like the way the way they are leaning on each other before the start of paces. The most hilarous part of this is the absence of guns and seconds- with swords you face each other in a duel. This imbalance is quite absurd, at thirty paces do they turn and throw their swords? hehe- I love this card, like so many others there are a million imaginings. Oh I am starting to feel disloyal to Pixie, but somehow I think she would approve of this deck! ~Rosanne

 

[baba-prague]

Aha, but there were of course duels with swords - with very definite rules too. But yes, I don't think it involved retreating to 30 paces! You'll see that both these combatants have indeed removed their coats - and the shrimp has his hand wrapped in a handkerchief - as was allowed. Mind-you, I do think the shrimp must be an a disadvantage - right out of his element!

http://www.classicalfencing.com/articles/DuelswiththeSword.shtml

By the way, it's a lovely thought that hadn't occurred to me, but Pixie would almost certainly have known Grandville's work - he continued to be popular (in fact right up to today). Nice, too, to remember that they were both involved in theatre.

 

[Purple Myst]

I saw this deck for the first time now on the website and I must say: WOW!!! It's beautiful!!! Definitely one for on my wishlist!

 

[Sophie]

Aha, but there were of course duels with swords - with very definite rules too. But yes, I don't think it involved retreating to 30 paces! You'll see that both these combatants have indeed removed their coats - and the shrimp has his hand wrapped in a handkerchief - as was allowed. Mind-you, I do think the shrimp must be an a disadvantage - right out of his element!

In the book, I'm placing all the numbered cards of the suit of Swords at the time of Grandville's involvement with political caricature. He purposely used his pencil as a sword in those days - in attack and defence! I have no doubt that he saw himself as a prickly hedgehog (in fact, in another drawing of his, he drew his own face to a hedgehog's body - the reverse of the hedgehog on this card), intent on being as sharp a nuisance as he could manage to the politicians of his day. The Two of Swords, that strange duel, baffled me for a bit, until I read a bit more about the stand-off he had with the censorship authorities of his day!

By the way, it's a lovely thought that hadn't occurred to me, but Pixie would almost certainly have known Grandville's work - he continued to be popular (in fact right up to today). Nice, too, to remember that they were both involved in theatre.

Yes! I hadn't made that theatrical link between them. At the height of his popularity, Grandville was even asked to design animal masks for actors that would be playing skits in a review based on his animal characters . And of course, he was close to theatre all his life, having first grandparents that were well-known actors, and later getting close to a cousin who was the bursar of the Opera-Comique.

 

[baba-prague]

You know, I did a quick Google just in case there seemed to be any definite link between them (what was I hoping to find? Well, not a lot but maybe a quote from Pixie saying something like "That Grandville, what an illustrator!") But of course nothing. But she MUST have been aware of this work I think. I must go searching properly - or ask someone here who knows a lot more about her life.

I rather like the notion of the shrimp as censor ;-) (no, I know you didn't mean it quite as literally as that!)

 

[Sophie]

I rather like the notion of the shrimp as censor ;-) (no, I know you didn't mean it quite as literally as that!)

ROFL! It would work, though - censors are primitive life-forms with hard shells . Actually, Grandville did a funny caricature about censorship in his day. He drew the then Minister of the Interior waltzing ecstatically with a large pair of cissors. The pair are floating out of a ministerial case, which is shaped like a coffin. (It's called The Resurrection of Censorship).