Original Rider-Waite Tarot Set U.S. Games Systems

This edition, distinguished by its subtle, muted color tones, is an indispensable addition to any tarot collection. The bright, primary colors seen in the familiar 1909 version of Rider-Waite® Tarot deck published by U.S. Games Systems, Inc. have been returned to their original palette exemplified in the Arts and Crafts style of the early 20th century. For example, the pale blue backgrounds seen in The Star and the Wheel of Fortune cards are presented here as minty green. Tarot aficionados will be pleased to see that the card backs have been restored to their original design of Tudor roses and lilies in pale blue. The Original Rider-Waite® Tarot Pack includes a Celtic Cross card-spread guide and an updated version of The Pictorial Key to the Tarot, written by Arthur Edward Waite. This new edition includes a thoughtful foreword by Liz Greene, who not only places tarot in a historical context, but also situates it in a broader context. She describes tarot as “a series of pictorial portrayals of the archetypal human life-journey.”

Specs

•  US Games 
• Size Cards measure 2.75″ x 4.75″
• Sleeve, 6″ x 5.25″
• Language EN
• Artist Pamela Colman Smith

Artist

Pamela Coleman Smith was an artist, illustrator, and writer. Born in Pimlico, Middlesex (now London), Smith was the daughter of American merchant Charles Edward Smith and Corinne Colman. Smith’s life was often very transitory. Her father’s job with the West India Improvement Company stationed the family throughout Europe and North America’s eastern coast, and after her mother’s death when Smith was ten she was taken in by family friends who performed in the Lyceum traveling theatre.

In 1893, Smith moved to Brooklyn to be with her father. There, at age 15, she enrolled at the relatively new Pratt Institute and studied art under Arthur Wesley Dow. After her graduation four years later she returned to England, where she became an illustrator and theatrical designer.

Smith wrote and illustrated several books, and designed the Rider-Waite-Smith deck of Tarot cards for Arthur Edward Waite in 1909—designs still used today.

In 1909, Waite paid Smith a flat fee for illustrating his Tarot deck. He chose Pamela for the job because of her talent, their common membership in the Golden Dawn, and because he believed her clairvoyant abilities would help her perceive the higher mystical truths he was attempting to convey with his deck. She not only didn’t benefit financially from the deck, but the publisher’s name was put on the deck instead of hers. Recently, the tarot community has been correcting this injustice by referring to the deck as the Rider Waite Smith (RWS) or Waite Smith deck (WS).

She never married. After the end of the First World War, Smith received an inheritance that enabled her to move to Cornwall, an area popular with artists. She died in Bude, Cornwall on the 18th of September, 1951.