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this is how i displayed my final outcome on the day of our course crit. The cards are laid out in the celtic cross tarot spread. The zines i made to accompany the cards are also ready to be read.

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this is a poster i designed along with my coursemate Phoebe Gitsham. As we felt our outcomes linked together we decide to make a combined poster. I put them up all around the university campus to appeal to superstitious people and invite them to view our outcomes.

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This is a stone lithography print I also designed alongside the brief. I wanted this print to be more symbolic and pictorial. It still depicts the city at the time of the Plague but i wanted to play around with layers and mark making.

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I love etching and printmaking and was excited to get back to the workshop. This is one etching I decided to do alongside the brief. It depicts the city, inspired by the style of illustrations made at the time, at the time of the out break.

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i love the original rider waite tarot. the colours and the illustrations.

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I love the art work of charlotte saloman. She was a jewish woman in the 20th century and her work chronicles her life and her family's life hiding from the nazi's from 1940-1945. The work is beautifully rendered in goache. I love the composition and colour of her images. The poignancy of her reality is so real and raw and I think it is some of the best visual storytelling.

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I wasn't sure at first what to do for my CPP. I had a few ideas -the representation of symbolism. I'm interested in how people interpret signs, which i though could be quite interesting. I then changed and thought i was going to do an essay on the representation of poverty in art-however that was very broad and io struggled to narrow it down although i was interested in it. Finally I decided to link my CPP, in a way, to my storytelling brief and connect it to the plague.

What interested me about the plague is how we think we are so different from the people of the past today. when really we are more alike than we are different. That is what I decided to discuss in my visual essay. Comparing different aspects of both outbreaks and how people in the past and today dealt with them.

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As a born Londoner I am interested in the history and stories of this city. Having heard them growing up I'm interested in different ways they can be interpreted today and how they can be displayed in a new visual way. some stories I found while doing my research include: If the ravens leave the Tower of London, England will fall-a symbol of doom, i often heard this as a child. however the ravens weren't introduced to the tower till the 1800s. There is the myth about the two princes in the tower-the nephews of king richard the third. these boys disappeared mysteriously and were never found. The freezing of the thames- the ice fairs and ice-skating happening in the 1800s.

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The Great Plague refers to the 1665 epidemic of the bubonic and pneumonic plague that was present through medieval and early modern europe. In the 1300s it was coined the “Black Death” . My interest in The plague as a historical event I think stems from learning about it as a child and being terrified that I would one day catch the plague. Then thinking about the last few years and the world experiencing a pandemic - my childhood fear came true. I think I’m interested in the mystery surrounding illness and the superstitions and folklore people come up to cope it with. What i also find interesting about the Great Plague is it followed a similar pattern to our own pandemic. It started slowly at the start of 1665 and by April and the summer it started to reach its peak. An estimated 75,000 people died in the outbreak although some say it could’ve reached 100,000. When someone was suspected of having the plague they were locked in their house, the healthy with them, as they were suspected of being contaminated. A red or black cross was written on their door. Preventatives such as good smelling herbs and charms were worn to protect against sickness. Animals were killed as they were suspected of transferring plague. All of these aspects of the story i want to symbolize in a card, that way I’ll be able to tell the story, with all of it’s mystery.

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The history of Tarot cards is one shrouded in mystery. Receiving my own deck on my birthday encouraged my interest in the cards. They most likely became popular around the 14th century in Italy. The oldest surviving deck-although it is unfinished- is the Visconti-Sforza deck, the designs influenced by the carnival performers at the time. At this time the cards were mostly a harmless game called “Tarocchi”. French occultists in the 18th century popularised the idea that the tarot cards were spiritual in nature. They became a popular tool in the occult tradition. The cards are split into the Major Arcana and The Minor Arcana. The major being the archetype cards and the minor being the suits. When reading the cards there are a multitude of spreads to choose from. The classic spread I have chosen to tell my story through is the “Celtic Cross” . It requires a specific question to be asked -or story to be told- and helps the questioner answer it. I decided on this particular spread to display my cards because it allowed me to tell the story of the plague with an air of mystery. With Tarot there is always many ways of looking at the cards, often positive and negative. And at the time of the plague people had many different beliefs about what started the plague; how to keep it at bay; how to cure it and how to bury the dead. I wanted this sense of ambiguity to be present but also the strong storytelling aspect.

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In the second week of the project I spoke to my tutor Sara and decided to focus down onto one brief. Whilst telling her my ideas she helped me to realised I was , without meaning to, fulfilling the brief of Craft, Skill , Story. I had at this point decided that I wanted to retell the story of The Great Plague of 1665 in the form of a tarot card spread. She made me realise that what I actually wanted to do was retell this particular story- that I’ve heard many times before -in a new way. I decided to go away and do more research and decide hwo to take my idea forward.

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I was also interested in the game brief “what choice do I have”  . I recently recieved a Tarot deck and have become interested in interpreting the cards. I also often play cards at work - i work in a a pub- and at home with my family. I’m interested in the community, symbolism and history to do with card games. The idea that games are passed around by word of mouth and never quite remembered properly interests me.

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My first idea was to remake the game of blackjack with different symbols replacing the original cards and trump cards in particular. However i couldn’t settle on a theme for my game which i was happy enough with . I also felt by doing this brief i wouldn’t be able to be as free with my drawing as i wanted to be .

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At the start of this project I was instantly drawn to the deconstructing brief. I liked how broad it was and for me it felt like it had the most potential to make something to do with telling a story but not in a traditional way such as a comic or book. I like to imagine the viewer interpreting my work for themselves-i like to give them time to look and sit with it and decide what they want to take away- instead of telling a story too directly.

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I did some brainstorming and the workshop with Sara . I really enjoyed deconstructing this one particular image of my friend sitting at a candle-lit table. I made lots of different drawings focusing on different aspects of the image -such as the colours, the light and shadows. The objects such as the wine bottles and the candles. This influenced me to be interested in focusing on bright colours and shapes with whatever I decided to produce.

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If one thing can be said for the past year, it's that it was a highly unpredictable one. Sometimes a future full of ambiguity can add an air of excitement to life, but the uncertainty that the pandemic offered us has been of the more stressful variety.

In this era of uncertainty, I've been turning again and again to the age-old practice of reading tarot cards. Although the mere mention of the tarot may elicit eye rolls in some, gazing at the cards and their iconic, archetypal images, gave me great clarity in an uneasy time, if not a clear sign of future developments. Falling in love with those images led me to wonder what sort of tarot-related materials Watson holds in its stacks. The results were much more diverse, and sometimes radical, than my tarot deck could have told me.

One artist who reinterpreted the tarot in his own inimitable style is Salvador Dali, who designed his own deck in 1984. Originally planned as a prop in the James Bond film Live and Let Die, the deck was cut from the film when Dali's budget-extending fees couldn't be reconciled. Dali continued working on the cards in spite of this, the end result being a colorful deck consisting of collages of famous art works, Dali motifs, and self-portraits as various tarot personae. Spotting the source materials of these cards can be just as fun as using them in a reading (albeit the latter is a little tricky), and Johannes Fiebig's accompanying text provides some extra insight into Dali's process.

Some artists have dispensed with the divination aspect of the tarot altogether, instead reimagining the cards as works of art in and of themselves. Suzanne Treister's amazing deck, published by Black Dog in 2004 as , takes the archetypal, 78-card deck and recasts it as an illustrated history of conspiracy theories, technology, countercultural icons, the supernatural, and where all these elements intersect. The results are a dizzying kaleidoscope of images and ideas that could give even the most esoteric deck a run for its money.

The French-American sculptor and painter Niki de Saint Phalle is a double threat when it comes to reimagining those classic tarot images in her instantly recognizable style. Not only did she design her own versions of the twenty-two Major Arcana cards, she also made sculptural versions and displayed them in her very own Tarot Garden. Watson's special collections holding, The Tarot Garden, is expertly crafted by Saint Phalle herself, and features her thoughts on this self-described culmination of her work, as well as images of the forty-foot sculptures themselves! Watson Library also loaned out a deck of Saint Phalle's tarot cards-Niki de Saint Phalle Tarot Cards-to MoMA P.S.1 for an exhibition in 2020. Below is a pop-up work by Saint Phalle that is discussed in more depth in an earlier article about Watson's collection of Niki de Saint Phalle.

Another artist who has put a photographic spin on the tarot is Alice Smeets. Inspired by the vibrant images Pamela Colman-Smith created for the famous Rider-Waite tarot deck, Smeets collaborated with a group of artists known as Atis Rezistans to recreate and recast Colman-Smith's illustrations in a Haitian ghetto. In so doing, she hopes to "highlight the creativity and strength of (Haiti's) citizens," while also reaching "beyond cultural boundaries of prejudice and ignorance to achieve a much-needed transformation of the collective conscious perception of the ghetto ..." Looking at these colorful and powerful images, I think it's safe to say she succeeded.

Taking yet another totally original approach, The Black School has created the Process Deck, a tool for action rather than divination. Using the structure of the tarot, the cards are meant to be used for "brainstorming and designing creative activism projects." As a tarot reading can offer suggestions on how to approach a particular issue, likewise, the Process Deck presents the querent with a series of questions and choices in order to identify, define, and ultimately create impactful projects that get to the root of an issue.

Those looking get lost in the imagery of the tarot need look no further than the Sola-Busca deck, the earliest example of a complete, seventy-eight card deck. The Sola-Busca is unique in that it depicts famous historical figures such as Julius Caesar's uncle, Gaius Marius, and appears to tell the story of the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. It is also alleged to hold many esoteric secrets, some of which are explored in the Watson title The Game of Saturn: Decoding the Sola-Busca Farocchi by Peter Mark Adams.

And if one wants to go even farther back, then they can't go wrong with the Visconti-Sforza, the oldest surviving-although incomplete-tarot deck. Besides being one of the most beautiful decks, thanks to the surviving card's gilt backgrounds, it's also one of the most inspirational, serving as a basis for the composition and numbering of modern decks and generating works of fiction based around its illustrations. Watson titles such as Richard Cavendish's The Tarot give a great overview of this and a plethora of other tarot decks.

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If one thing can be said for the past year, it's that it was a highly unpredictable one. Sometimes a future full of ambiguity can add an air of excitement to life, but the uncertainty that the pandemic offered us has been of the more stressful variety.

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For centuries, the playing cards have captivated seekers of all kinds - including creative types - and have become especially popular of late.

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The artist Isa Beniston's Gentle Thrills Tarot deck. Credit... Courtesy of Gentle Thrills

Dior's spring 2021 haute couture collection debuted last January with a lush short film created by Matteo Garrone that opens with a tarot reading that transports its querent to a mysterious chateau populated by sumptuously dressed figures from the card deck - the Fool, the Empress, an anthropomorphized Sun and Moon - who act as signposts as she travels down one corridor and then another. The short, and the looks it showcased, which were designed by the brand's artistic director, Maria Grazia Chiuri, was partly inspired by Italo Calvino's 1973 novel, "The Castle of Crossed Destinies," in which the characters lose the power of speech and can communicate only through tarot cards, and it nodded to Christian Dior's well-documented interest in the divinatory arts, on which he particularly relied during the precarious days of the Second World War.

The High Priestess in a still from Matteo Garrone's film "Le Château du Tarot" for Dior's spring 2021 haute couture collection. Credit... Courtesy of Dior

By the 1940s, tarot was already a centuries-old practice - it is thought to have originated in Central Europe in the 1400s, and the oldest surviving cards hail from decks commissioned in the mid-15th century by Filippo Maria Visconti, the Duke of Milan, and his successor, Francesco Sforza, and feature detailed illustrations of nobility and gilded backgrounds. These and other decks became status symbols for upper-class Italians, who used them to play an early version of bridge. The practice spread to France in the 18th century, and the cards were assigned mystical meanings when occultists, among them the cleric Antoine Court, attempted to create an association between tarot and ancient Egyptian spiritual thought. The connection proved spurious, but still, tarot took on a life of its own, with more and more mystics - the influential British occultists Aleister Crowley and Arthur Edward Waite among them - using its decks to predict the future: the Death card, for instance, might symbolize a coming period of radical change and rebirth, while the Temperance card might suggest a need for balance. The deck Waite devised, which was first printed in 1909, has long been considered a good place to start for those just familiarizing themselves with the major and minor arcana, terms used to describe the trump and suit cards, respectively.

It's no surprise that tarot carried over into the 20th century, too - along with the advances afforded by modernity came plenty of conflict and confusion - or that its popularity has surged in the last couple of years, during which the pandemic has scrambled nearly everyone's notions of the normal order of things. The search for meaning and direction, it seems, has never gone out of style and feels especially urgent at present. And even if we don't actually believe in the cards, they do seem to possess an imaginative power that, amid so much uncertainty, can be hard to access in ourselves. Who wouldn't welcome any kind of indication as to where we may be headed right about now?

One group consistently and particularly taken with tarot is artists. The decks are a sort of art object, after all, and artists are themselves in the business of making meaning. In the early 1970s, Salvador Dalí began work on a deck featuring himself as the magician and his wife, Gala, as the Empress. In 1979, Niki de Saint Phalle began constructing her Tarot Garden, a grouping, in Italy's Tuscan hills, of 22 large-scale concrete sculptures inspiredbytarot imagery and adorned with mosaic and mirrored tiles. A standout is "The Empress," an opulent large-breasted sphinx adorned with a crown, which served for a time as the artist's living quarters.

Now, a new generation of artists and designers are channeling their creativity by making decks of their own, ones that reflect the current era. The New York-based artist Tattfoo Tan created his New Earth Resiliency Oracle Cards as a part of his New Earth project, an immersive, teaching-based work that instructs users in both practical skills and spiritual modalities intended to help them contend with climate change. While we might associate tarot with the celestial, to Tan it can be a tool for staying connected to nature and the seasons here on earth. Accordingly, his deck features minimalist black-and-white sketches of fog, winter and drought. For her part, the Indiana-based artist Courtney Alexander is linking tarot to the politics of representation. Disturbed by how many so-called Black tarot decks, or those depicting Black characters, were created by white artists, she set out to make one that felt more authentically inclusive. The result was her Dust II Onyx deck, the cards of which are printed with Alexander's ornate multimedia collage paintings, works rooted in Black diasporic histories and popular culture. She gave the King of Swords, traditionally a symbol of intellect, the name Papa Blade, the face of Neil deGrasse Tyson and the eyes of George Washington Carver, and the Queen of Cups, the ruler of the emotional realm, the name Mama Gourd, the face of Missy Elliott and the eyes of the poet and activist Nikki Giovanni. "The story of Blackness deserves reverence," Alexander says, "and to be seen as powerful."

Other decks nod to various art movements. For the Michigan-based artists Linnea Gits and Peter Dunham's Pagan Otherworlds Tarot deck, Gits studied the work of Renaissance artists like Albrecht Dürer and then did an original oil painting for each card. (Dunham did the lettering.) The overall effect, though, is rather surreal - her grim reaper is a skeleton with wings made of arrows who's in the process of stepping on the head of a half-buried woman holding up a flower - and recall the early 20th-century Surrealists' habit of combining seemingly disparate objects in the hope of arriving at hidden psychological truths. (Gits and Dunham are among the artists included in " Tarot. The Library of Esoterica" [2020], Jessica Hundley, Johannes Fiebig and Marcella Kroll's visual art history of the practice.) And the artist Isa Beniston began creating her Gentle Thrills Tarot deck while quarantining in her Los Angeles apartment in 2020. Unable to access her studio, and in need of a project, she picked up new supplies at a nearby store and made hyper-colorful, Fauvist-feeling versions of the cards using gouache. She also relates to the tradition of the salon, and hopes her project will inspire not just self-knowledge but togetherness. "I think people are most joyful when they use the deck with friends," she says. "And I love the idea that my work might be used to help build community. That's all an artist can really hope for."

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The Artists and Designers Making Tarot Decks for Today

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For centuries, the playing cards have captivated seekers of all kinds - including creative types - and have become especially popular of late. Send any friend a story As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Anyone can read what you share.

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David HockneyKing of Hearts, 1979 “This is very typical of the work he was doing at that period, quite scratchy.”

Photograph: PR

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Anish Kapoor

Ace of Hearts, 2005"Anish Kapoor's small 'red wax' style image contrasts with the artist's 115 metre tower in the Olympic Park."

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Fancy yourself as an art dealer? Forthcoming exhibition A Portfolio for the Hip (Pocket) will feature two beautifully illustrated, limited-edition decks of cards dating from 1979 and 2005. Contemporary artists - from Hockney to Hambling - were commissioned to design a card for the decks, which will be available to buy. "I like making things available that are affordable but really high-quality art," says Daniel Brant, exhibition curator and director at London's A&D Gallery. "We've framed one of each piece, but someone buys a piece and they get the whole pack, so they can change over the pictures whenever they want." The exhibition will run from 24 July to 30 August at 51 Chiltern Street, London W1.

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British artists' playing cards - in pictures

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Fancy yourself as an art dealer? Forthcoming exhibition A Portfolio for the Hip (Pocket) will feature two beautifully illustrated, limited-edition decks of cards dating from 1979 and 2005. Contemporary artists - from Hockney to Hambling - were commissioned to design a card for the decks, which will be available to buy.

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The Great Plague

Bubonic plague terrorised Europe for centuries. In 1665 a devastating epidemic struck this country killing thousands of people.

Officially the 'Great Plague' killed 68,595 people in London that year. The true figure is probably nearer 100,000 or one-fifth of the city's population.

Bubonic plague did not arrive in London suddenly in 1665. For over a year, reports of cases had been talked about endlessly. The wealthy increasingly avoided the city and might very well survive an outbreak.

For the poor escaping London was more difficult and the cramped and filthy conditions in which many lived encouraged the spread of the disease. Any house where plague was identified was supposed to be shut up for 40 days with the family inside, marked with a cross and guarded by watchmen. Fear of being locked in with the dying meant that many early cases of plague were kept quiet.

Symptoms

Symptoms of bubonic plague included:

fever

delirium

painful swellings of the lymph nodes in the neck, armpits and groin ('buboes')

vomiting

muscle cramps

coughing up blood

Plague usually resulted in death, normally within a week of the first symptoms. The first few days though were without symptom and someone fleeing the dead could be a good carrier.

London during the Great Plague

The peak of the epidemic was the week of 19-26 September 1665 when London mortality bills recorded 7,165 deaths from plague. London now appeared almost deserted during the day. Grass grew on the streets of Whitehall and the court fled London for Oxford. In the City, the keeping of dogs, cats, and other domestic animals was banned and the dog-catcher destroyed over 4,000 dogs. Boats no longer sailed on the Thames and the Navy wisely kept its ships away from London.

Night after night, porters took piles of corpses for burial, filling large pits with the dead. Adding to the horror were rumours of the bereaved and the ill throwing themselves into the pits alive.

'I having stayed in the city till above 7400 died in one week, and of them above 6000 of the plague, and little noise heard day or night but tolling of bells; till I could walk Lombard Street, and not meet twenty persons from one end to the other ... till whole families (ten and twelve together) have been swept away ... till the nights (though much lengthened) are grown too short to conceal the burials of those that died the day before'

Samuel Pepys, letter to Elizabeth Lady Carteret, 4 September 1665

Plague deaths rose rapidly in the spring of 1665; by June a quarter of deaths recorded in London were attributed to the plague, by August this figure had risen to 75%.

By early 1666 the number of people dying from the plague was receding and the epidemic was all but over by the summer of 1666.

The last reported case of the plague in London was in 1679. Although no one knew it at the time, this would mark the end of the era of plague that had devastated populations across Europe from the 14th Century.

What caused the plague?

In the aftermath of the Civil War and the religious conflicts of the time, people were quick to point the finger at who or what they thought was to blame for plague.

Some looked to the alignment of the planets or the ominous appearance of a comet in December 1664 to explain the epidemic.

Medical folk discussed the transmission of the illness through bad smells. There was a good trade in nosegays and pomanders stuffed with medicinal herbs, and a proposal to float a ship of peeled onions down the Thames to counter the evil odours was entertained. Some people put their faith in amulets and charms or, like Samuel Pepys, chewed tobacco to ward off the plague:

'I was forced to buy some roll tobacco to smell to and chaw - which took away the apprehension.'

Samuel Pepys, 7 June 1665

The plague was actually caused by infected fleas carried by black rats, although this would not be known for centuries to come. Rats were particularly prevalent in the cramped and dirty streets of the capital occupied by the poorest residents.
Explore the Great Plague further in our fact-packed infographic

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Bubonic plague terrorised Europe for centuries. In 1665 a devastating epidemic struck this country killing thousands of people.

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As we grapple with the Covid-19 pandemic, historian Vanessa Harding describes the events of the Great Plague that afflicted London in 1665, and explains how people at the time sought to cope with the disease. Historyextra.com/podcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Plague Folklore: Strange Doctors, Cures, and the Black Death

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From strange remedies to theories of the cause, there is plenty of plague folklore throughout history. How much of it is true? Find out here.

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In successive years of the 17th century, London suffered two terrible disasters. In the spring and summer of 1665 an outbreak of Bubonic Plague spread from parish to parish until thousands had died...

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To go along with my cards i wanted to make a little explanation zine. This is a guide usually given with tarot decks to help people interpret the cards.

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this card represent london and the calm before the storm

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A Journal of a Plague Year - Daniel Defoe
Diary of Samuel Pepys - Samuel Pepys
A history of playing cards
London lore Roud, Stephen
The encylclopedia of tarot Kaplan, Stuart R
The folklore of London / Clayton, Antony

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this card represents the plague coming to London and the Challenge it will bring

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before the plague hit a comet was seen across the sky in 1664. Many people believed this to be an omen of something harmful to come. I've represented it here with the symbol for a comet and bright yellow ink.

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this card represents the ultimate goal for the people of London; Health and Wealth. I've represented this with gold daisy chain flowers-many people thought this kept plague away- and the charm ABRACADABRA written this way creating an upside down triangle was a common good luck charm.

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Many people believed the plague was God punishing them for something they had done. This card represents people's belief in God's power and their fear of him.

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the killing of cats and dogs was done as people thought they spread plague. In actuality this increased the spread as there was no longer any animals killing the rats that were really spreading the disease.

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represents the rich leaving and the poor being left behind in the city. The government and the king at the time left to go to Oxford to escape the city. All those who were poorer with no where else to go had to stay in the city were it was most dangerous.

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the plague doctor is depicted here holding a good luck charm. This card represents all the mysterious ways people tried to prevent and cure plague.

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before the plague ended, the cold winter came which slowed down the spread of infection. I also wanted to reference the plague pits people were buried in. they are still around today. people say if you see crows crowding around a certain area it is because you are standing on an old plague pit.

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the fire of London is said to have partially ended the plague-although this is disputed. However i think a apart of folklore and storytelling is that it stories become true the more people tell them. So i've ended my story with this event.