Historical Deck - Moorish/Barcelona/Wintle

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variantventures
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Historical Deck - Moorish/Barcelona/Wintle

Unread post by variantventures »

You can read all about this deck over at World of Playing Cards. Long story short, two sheets of uncut cards dating to the 15th Century were found in a book in Barcelona. They made up a partial deck of cards. There were, unfortunately, no surviving court cards. The cards bear a strong resemblance to 16th Century Mamluk cards in the Topkapi museum, particularly the cups and the batons/polo-sticks. As these cards were blockprinted they are almost certainly European cards with European courts. I have imagined them as Islamic style cards, however, and have given them Islamic style courts; that is to say without illustrations of people.

I'll upload some detailed images later but for now you can see the basic proof sheet. My intention is to blockprint a few of these decks but, since the labor costs make those decks too expensive to appeal to anyone, that's mostly for my own pleasure. I'm currently looking at printing these cards using Printer's Studio. I've worked with them before and I'm aware of the card quality. On historical decks that's actually not a terrible drawback.

I've sized the cards at actual size which means they need to be printed on Tarot size cards. The actual cards probably had a blank back since producing uniform backs was very difficult back then. I can do my cards with blank backs (which is accurate but kind of... bland) or I can do them with an Islamic-style repeating geometric pattern. I've also sized the cards to fit a mini size deck. That was done just for the sake of bringing the per deck price down to a semi-reasonable level. And since I was deviating so far from the historical record I slapped together a colored version of the mini-deck which you can see below.

I'm not really planning on kick-starting these. Simply put I don't think there's enough demand to justify producing more than 100 of these and any volume less than 2000 simply wouldn't bring the price down low enough. On demand printing will mean a higher price per deck, but it will allow the customer greater choice by customizing the size, backing, colored or black and white.

https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn1/t1.0-9/46753_10201271164201132_1922792166_n.jpg

https://scontent-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-frc3/t1.0-9/1660459_10201402383241526_6104493106471661174_n.jpg
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Re: Historical Deck - Moorish/Barcelona/Wintle

Unread post by MagikFingerz »

That's certainly an interesting piece of history. As you said though, it's hard to gauge demand it being tarot size and all. Reprints of old designs have varied in success.

What will your price point be if you go ahead as planned?
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variantventures
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Re: Historical Deck - Moorish/Barcelona/Wintle

Unread post by variantventures »

MagikFingerz wrote:That's certainly an interesting piece of history. As you said though, it's hard to gauge demand it being tarot size and all. Reprints of old designs have varied in success.

What will your price point be if you go ahead as planned?
Tarot size in black and white with or without the decorate back is US$15 plus shipping. That's for the 300gsm smooth finish. They'll do the 310gsm with linen finish for an extra US$2.

The mini deck in color or black and white, with or without the decorated back, is US$8 plus shipping for the 300gsm smooth. US$10 for the 310gsm linen finish.

I'd like to get the price down to US$10 plus shipping for the Tarot size and US$5 plus shipping for the mini size. I'm still looking at options but it's probably not going to happen.
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Re: Historical Deck - Moorish/Barcelona/Wintle

Unread post by dazzleguts »

I like the idea of a mini deck of these.

Don't like the patterns in the background of the coloured cards.
Historically the cards would probably have been coloured after being block printed - either with stencils or by hand painting - so you are following what would have originally been done. But, the patterns you have used look like wall paper while in the Mamluks the background patterning follows the margins of the figures so that background and pattern were almost indistinguishable from each other.

Doing something closer to the Mamluks would take much time and skill. Perhaps you could use a subtler/finer pattern, with soft colouring, or no pattern at all and just an all-over background colour that is different for each suit. The cards are interesting even in the plain black and white form so you could just make it simple and attractively coloured.

For all we know the technology of the time - stencil colouring - could have made these much simpler then the Mamluks anyways. If they were going to have some form of the background patterning it would likely have been carved in to the plates these were printed from, and it's not there. I say this out of my own experience as a printmaker, and from what I know of the history of the medium.
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Re: Historical Deck - Moorish/Barcelona/Wintle

Unread post by variantventures »

dazzleguts wrote:I like the idea of a mini deck of these.

Don't like the patterns in the background of the coloured cards.
Historically the cards would probably have been coloured after being block printed - either with stencils or by hand painting - so you are following what would have originally been done. But, the patterns you have used look like wall paper while in the Mamluks the background patterning follows the margins of the figures so that background and pattern were almost indistinguishable from each other.

Doing something closer to the Mamluks would take much time and skill. Perhaps you could use a subtler/finer pattern, with soft colouring, or no pattern at all and just an all-over background colour that is different for each suit. The cards are interesting even in the plain black and white form so you could just make it simple and attractively coloured.

For all we know the technology of the time - stencil colouring - could have made these much simpler then the Mamluks anyways. If they were going to have some form of the background patterning it would likely have been carved in to the plates these were printed from, and it's not there. I say this out of my own experience as a printmaker, and from what I know of the history of the medium.
I agree the background feels to big and smaller elements would work better. That led to problems with line weight and made the cards feel less like woodcut and stenciled cards. I'll give it another try. I'll also take a look at the solid colors. If I'm willing to deviate a little on the court cards I can probably make that work. I'll get back to y'all.

Thank you.
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Re: Historical Deck - Moorish/Barcelona/Wintle

Unread post by variantventures »

I've tried mucking about with a few variations. A single color background made the deck feel too cartoony. Reducing the existing pattern size and/or line weight didn't really do anything to help it. Changing the background to a lotus flower helped a little, but only a little. I accidentally overlaid the card back pattern on a card and that made me feel happy. So how about something like these? Coins and Polo-Sticks have a green background (might have to change the throne colors a little on these) and Swords and Cups have a red background. The pattern ties in to the card back and is much less obtrusive than the repeating flowers.

https://scontent-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-frc1/t1.0-9/10155942_10201493847248069_3929670193004201487_n.jpghttps://scontent-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn2/t1.0-9/10153639_10201493847448074_5188329309714042999_n.jpghttps://scontent-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-frc1/t1.0-9/10299948_10201493847288070_6530106895642436078_n.jpghttps://scontent-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/t1.0-9/10175961_10201493847928086_8143468699853847635_n.jpghttps://scontent-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-frc3/t1.0-9/1002682_10201493847688080_8895147467938443413_n.jpg
variantventures
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Re: Historical Deck - Moorish/Barcelona/Wintle

Unread post by variantventures »

I got the test decks back from the printer yesterday and I'm pretty happy. The tarot-size version of this deck works very well. The mini-size, not so much. I preserved the original card proportions and accepted there would be extra white-space on the faces. It's too much white-space. If I want to do a good mini-deck I really need to a do a deck rebuild that uses as much of the face as possible. I have some ideas on how to best do that and I'll give them a try.

This is a really crappy photo, but I'm sure you can see what I mean about the white space. I'm pretty happy with all the other aspects, including the backgrounds. The floral background came out better than I expected.

https://scontent-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/t1.0-9/1911976_10201542692229163_2368736369717902529_n.jpg
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