Tarots of Marseille

These cards are copies of examples from several late 17^th and 18^th C wood-blocked decks produced in the then-dominant Marseille style. The colours are flat and crude: the artwork is also rather crude, in a simplistic "playing card" style, but the handling of human faces is lively and amusing, and even though the pip cards are non-pictorial they are highly decorative.

The interpretations of the cards are standard and traditional, except that the Minor Arcana do not have reverse meanings. There are obviously at least two versions of this deck, and some degree of confusion, because the leaflet which accompanies the deck says that there is no Magician and that the cards are numbered with The Fool as #I and a card called The Madman as #0, placed at the end of the Major Arcana after The World. But in fact the cards are as per standard with The Fool at #0 at the start, The Magician at #I and no Madman.