Tarot decks available from artisantarot.com, Instagram: @artisantarot
Socks available from footclothes.com, Instagram: @footclothesofficial
I feel I should warn you: this post is not just some product review, it is also a tremendous “thank you” to those products’ creators: Artisan Tarot and FootClothes! Recently, these manufacturers ran a raffle of sorts, a giveaway, and I may have entered the contest…oh, roughly thirty-nine times. No shame in my game: I wanted the Jacques Viéville deck and the socks. Still, the email telling me that I had won the haul was a delightful surprise, and I am very grateful to Artisan Tarot and FootClothes for their exceptionally high-quality products!
I only became aware of Artisan Tarot a year or so ago. The reviews were good, and even though I have always had a fondness for the Marseille or pip-style decks, I didn’t consider myself a Marseille-style deck reader. Over time, especially these last two years, as I have become more involved in an ostensibly esoteric, Kabala-based approach to tarot, pip decks are fast becoming my preferred readers, and now I actively seek them out. Artisan Tarot then offered a free set of Jean Noblet Trumps (with eight dollars shipping), and I jumped on it, of course (because…cheap). Artisan Tarot, like any good dealer, knew that the “free sample” would hook us, and it did. I ordered the full Jean Noblet deck post haste. Shortly thereafter, when I read of the giveaway on Instagram, I entered…ahem, thirty-nine times because Daddy needs a fix, and he ain’t got no more kidneys to sell.
But first, the socks…the haul was supposed to include six pairs of esoterically themed socks from FootClothes. Between Artisan Tarot and Cierra at FootClothes, I received seven pairs of some of the highest quality socks I have ever tried on, one for every day of the week. My wife noted how minimal the toe seams are since that is her particular bugbear where socks are concerned, and one of my daughters, quite the clothing snob, also remarked on their exceptional quality as she cast an avaricious eye on the pair she examined.
The socks are soft and comfortable, but also noticeably sturdy in their construction. The weave is close and tight, and the imagery on the socks themselves is clear and delightful, a lovely pairing of heavy-handed quality with light-hearted themes. With regard to the tarot socks specifically, the colors are extraordinary for both their vibrancy and their accuracy to the colors of the cards themselves. I simply could not be more pleased!
The Jacques Viéville Tarot by Artisan Tarot is a “remastered” version of the deck originally printed by Viéville in Paris in 1650. Only one copy of this deck remains, housed safely in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. As the history of tarot goes, the Viéville Tarot displays some unusual characteristics. While all the trumps exist, they appear to be reversed images of the more common tarots (the Fool walks toward the left; the High Priestess looks to the right; the sword and scales of Justice are in the opposite hands; the Hermit, quite lampless, walks toward the right); the trumps from VII to XI are slightly “out of order”; and the Hanged Man is “upside down.” No one is certain what Viéville used as an exemplar though there are commonalities with the Flemish tarots of the time: the “Tower” is actually a tree over which ominous clouds loom, the Star displays an astrologer, the Moon shows a woman working with distaff and spindle, and The World is ruled by a haloed representation of Jesus (who rather humorously hides His Naughty Bits with a scepter so phallic it only draws attention to them). At the time the Viéville tarot was printed, the main French publishers of cards were located in Paris, Lyons, and Avignon. In fact, one of Viéville’s Parisian contemporaries would have been the tarotier Jean Noblet. Marseille-based tarot production didn’t pick up until the eighteenth century.
Be that as it may, the deck is an odd delight. Krisztina Kondor and William Rader have done an amazing job with the deck. The pristine linework mimics the original lines of the 1650 woodcut print, so this is not a “rectified” deck: the bizarre, melting creature that we generally call a lion in the Strength card appears as it did, and the “Hanged Man” still appears to be dancing on a weird wooden swing (and oddly, the French scholar Antoine Court de Gébelin would maintain this error over a century and many rather consistent tarots later in his Monde primitif of 1781…). With a few exceptions, the imagery remains essentially Marseille, and the cards are immediately useable. And use them I shall. The six colors of the tarot’s palette are strong and earthy, and the artisans at Artisan Tarot create beautiful transitions between complementary colors that never lose their vibrancy.
The card quality is simply fantastic. The cards are the standard 70 mm by 120 mm size. As far as the card stock, I knew what to expect since I had already ordered the Jean Noblet, but the stock, that of an expensive deck of playing cards, feels even better in the larger cards. One can see and feel the texture of the cards, and I delight in the riffle as they glide so smoothly one over another. And after the last riffle, they land on the table as flat as the day they were opened.
As mentioned earlier, I had already purchased Artisan Tarot’s edition of the Jean Noblet Tarot de Marseille some months ago. Originally published circa 1650, this deck is an absolute contemporary of the Viéville, but is a standard tarot—none of the Viéville’s “character,” as it were. The Artisan Tarot version’s card stock is as tactile and resilient as the Viéville, of course, but the colors— again, a limited palette highlighted by deep rusts, mustards, and midnight blues—are perfectly soothing in their smaller, bridge-sized format (57 by 89 mm). In the past, I’ve rarely purchased smaller cards to work with; however, after having gotten the Centennial RWS in a tin and the Tarot de Maria Celia, I decided that specifically the clean, useable format of Artisan Tarot’s Jean Noblet was the way to go, and I enjoy working with it more than I ever thought I would.
Again, I would like to express my gratitude to both FootClothes and Artisan Tarot for the wonderful haul! I don’t often gush, but the socks are phenomenal, and the tarots are truly works of love and labor, and the dedication that both of these companies have to producing a quality, customer-responsive product shows. I thank you all for your contributions to this wonderful modern tarot community! (So many exclamation points!)
The Tarot King of Mississippi 