Celebrating my website’s tenth anniversary: 174 blog articles and 42 website pages on tarot history, reading with non-scenic pips, and decks of historic significance. Throughout the summer, I’m going to group the most useful articles by topic and send out links in a series of blog posts.
The Piedmont region has one of the oldest tarot traditions in Italy. Its geographic location made it the crossroads where the playing card traditions of Italy and eastern France mingled. Below are articles on the Piedmont tradition and reviews of individual decks.
Start with Tarocco Piemontese-Piedmont Tarot, an overview of this regional style.
Characteristics of the Piedmont/Piemontese Tarot is a card-by-card listing of the details that set Piedmont decks apart from the Tarot de Marseille.
Avondo Brothers Addendum tells about one of the largest card printers in Piedmont. Their soprafino knock-off is still being produced by Lo Scarabeo as The Ancient Italian Tarot. It’s one of my favorite reading decks.
Tarocco Piemontese reviews the Strambo deck recreated by Il Meneghello.
Giordano Berti has published five decks from the nineteenth-century golden age of Tarot in Piedmont. Here are the reviews:
Tarocchi Vergnano – the ultimate in Piemontese style that won design awards when first published.
Tarocchi Perrin shows some soprafino influences.
Tarocchi Corband is another soprafino derivative.
Tarocchi Lando is a block printed deck that combines TdM I and II features with a few Piedmont flourishes.
Tarocchi Orientali Foudraz is a beautifully exotic deck created during the nineteenth-century chinoiserie craze.
In the Piedmont Roundup article I discuss various versions of the Guala deck and list links to all the Piedmont articles I’d written as of July 2015.
Illustration: Four Piedmont decks restored by Giordano Berti, their beautiful boxes glittering in the morning sun.