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Tarocchi Fine dalla Torre
The Museo dei Tarocchi near Bologna, Italy has given us many highly creative art decks. Now they have produced an historically significant bolognese tarocchi based on an original that rests in the...
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Tarocchi Orientali Foudraz
A collector recently discovered a trove of uncut sheets of tarot and playing cards that have been sitting in Turin’s archives of since the mid-19th century. Giordano Berti has given new life to one of...
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A Fifteenth Century Flemish Hunting Deck
While 15th-century Italian aristocrats were commissioning gilded and hand-painted tarot cards, aristocrats further north were doing the same with regular playing cards. The Metropolitan Museum of Art...
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Soprafino Death Card
When I saw this print on the Hyperallergic art blog, I immediately thought it must have been the inspiration for the Soprafino Death card (see below). The artist’s palette caught my eye first. Then I...
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Zoni Tarot de Marseille: Big and Small
I’ve just acquired the tiniest deck in my historical facsimile collection — a miniature version (1-1/8 x 2-¼ inches) of Il Meneghello’s reproduction of a TdM printed in Bologna in 1780 by Giacomo Zoni....
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From My Bookshelf: Courts and Courtly Arts in Renaissance Italy
If you want to immerse yourself in the world that gave us the Visconti-Sforza and Sola Busca decks, this book, subtitled Arts, Culture and Politics 1395 to 1530, will deliver. Nothing was ever the same...
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Besançon Decks
As far as I know, there are only a few Besançon-style decks on the market. I’ll start my survey with the most affordable and accessible deck, a re-creation by Evalyne Hall. While translating the...
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The Cartomancer December 2016 Issue
This magazine just keeps getting better. The latest issue has several articles that especially intrigued me. In the Tarot Art section, Monica Bodirsky’s Lucky Lenormand deck caught my eye. Its...
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From My Bookshelf: Mesmerism and the End of the Enlightenment in France
Are you ready for immersion in the electrifying atmosphere of pre-revolutionary Paris? Etteilla, Cagliostro and de Gebelin flourished in this era of scientific marvels, crackpot inventions and magnetic...
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Tarocchi Visconti Sforza by Il Meneghello
I already have three full-sized facsimiles of the Visconti-Sforza deck. So when I came across yet another version, published by Il Meneghello in 1996, I wrestled with temptation for a couple of weeks...
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The Two Madenié Decks
If you bought the first edition of the Pierre Madenié deck produced by Yves Reynaud in 2013, do you need to get the second edition as well? Yes, you probably do. Even though it’s my number one reading...
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Three New Tarot de Marseille Books
Things have certainly changed since I began reading with the TdM around the turn of the millennium. Back then there were no books in English on the subject; so I spent a fortune on shipping for a small...
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Tarotforum RIP
Waves of shock and grief are rolling through a large segment of the tarot community in reaction to the announcement that www.tarotforum.net will be shut down as of July 14, 2017. Since 2002,...
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From My Bookshelf: Sigismondo Malatesta and the Italian Renaissance
Sigismondo Malatesta, bad boy of the Renaissance, gave us our first documented evidence for tarot. Researcher Franco Pratesi discovered a note in a Florentine account book dated September 16, 1440...
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Comparing Visconti Sforza Replacement Cards: The Devil’s in the Details
If you can only own one or two Visconti Sforza decks, before purchasing you need to familiarize yourself with the replacement cards – Tower, Devil and Knight of Coins. (The Three of Swords is also...
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1760 Nicolas Conver Tarot de Marseille Restored by Yves Reynaud
Yves Reynaud, who has given new life to historically important TdMs like the Burdel, Payen and Madenié, just issued his restoration of the 1760 Conver deck in a limited edition of 1500. A decade ago,...
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The Rosenwald Deck
Sullivan Hismans, at Tarot Sheet Revival, has worked tarot magic again by creating an actual deck from sheets of tarot cards printed @1500 and housed in the Rosenwald collection of the National Gallery...
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Cross Spread with the Rosenwald Deck
I just did my first reading with my new Rosenwald deck. This deck reads like a dream. The fluid lines bring the images to life, and the pips are enough like the TdM so little adjustment is required....
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The Tarocchino Bolognese of Giuseppe Mitelli Published by Giordano Berti
The Tarocchino Bolognese engraved by Giuseppe Mitelli is a unique treasure. Just as the Visconti-Sforza deck was a luxury item commissioned by an aristocrat from a prominent artist in Cremona, this...
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The Cartomancer Magazine – November 2017
With this latest issue The Cartomancer is transitioning to its new owner/editor Arwen Lynch-Poe. I’m very happy to see that the magazine is just as beautiful as ever, stuffed full with tarot art...
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