When playing cards first appeared in Europe in the 14th and 15th century, before the invention of printing, they were handmade and handpainted by regional artists, often miniature painters. So there's a long history in the cooperation between cardmakers and artists.
Although their role has been overtaken for a long time by artisans and engravers, one can say that they fully returned to the stage in the middle of the 20th century. After the post-war recession had passed, they have been invited by cardmakers and publishers to design special -non-standard- decks and those artists, who were not asked or didn't seek professional quality, have found ways to publish their own decks, sometimes in numbered and very limited or low cost editions.

We have made a first selection of 5, that aims to show decks from this variety in artists and editions.
"The Archives" now hosts 15 previous expo's.
There will be regular changes in our selection and additions, so..........

VISIT US EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE.

	Jody Lynn Bergsma is an American artist, who grew up in close contact with the nature around her and made that the basic theme in her work.		Ruth Kedar is an American artist and designer. Her master thesis in Design at the Stanford University was on the design of playing cards. She has produced 2 decks: the Analog and the Duolog deck. Both are on xpo here.
5 SAMPLES		Christian Mischke is a German artist with a favour for fine, detailed colour etching. He has made a beautiful and well thought-out "4 continents"deck.
	XPO'S	JOKERS	EPHEMERA	HOME

Peter Wood's 15 years of creating playing cards hasn't gone unnoticed here. So time to pay a small tribute to this UK artist with a soft spot for teddy bears.

The Dutch artist Cerberus has made a deck that was controversial enough for the Russian FSB to confiscate 120 decks. The "Theatre of Pain" deck shows the players in the Chechen wars and was released in September 2005.

last section update: 3/5/2008