Strange Attractor Press AUSTIN OSMAN SPARE TAROT
An enlarged facsimile edition of Austin Osman Spare’s c1906 tarot deck, retaining his idiosyncratic edge-designs that create a unique and dynamic additional dimension for interpretation
In the first decade of the 20th century, the English artist Austin Osman Spare (1886-1956) hand painted a remarkable deck of fortune-telling cards. Produced in around 1906, this glowing relic of the British Occult Revival is thought to have been the young artist’s personal training deck, and it conveys the excitement and experimentation of a period that laid the early foundations for todays’s golden era of artist drawn tarots.
Spare’s deck had been lost to the world until its chance rediscovery in 2013 within the collection of The Magic Circle Museum in London. Had it not remained hidden from public view for so long, Spare’s creation could have significantly influenced tarot’s wider cultural development. The deck’s design is highly unusual for combining cartomancy and taromancy, and for the complex system of interconnecting visual motifs that link many of the cards across their borders.
This new edition contains a substantial amount of new and revised material, including a major new discovery about Spare’s sources for the attributions on his deck, hitherto unknown.
Co-published by Strange Attractor Press & The Magic Circle
UK Import
Deck of 78 cards on high quality matt laminate card stock + 18 pages booklet
13 x 8 x 14 cm cardboard box
Born within the sound of Bow Wells, Austin Osman Spare’s early intrest in art and the occult would remain with him throughout his life. After a turbulent career at the Roxyal College of Art and a pre-War period as a Mayfair enfant terrible, Spare’s star later waned and despite a modest renaissance at the end of his life, he died penniless and largely forgotten. Championed posthumously an an ousider, a sorcerer, a mystic and a shaman, Spare was above all else a powerful artist whose myth and reputation continue to grow long after his death.
An enlarged facsimile edition of Austin Osman Spare’s c1906 tarot deck, retaining his idiosyncratic edge-designs that create a unique and dynamic additional dimension for interpretation
In the first decade of the 20th century, the English artist Austin Osman Spare (1886-1956) hand painted a remarkable deck of fortune-telling cards. Produced in around 1906, this glowing relic of the British Occult Revival is thought to have been the young artist’s personal training deck, and it conveys the excitement and experimentation of a period that laid the early foundations for todays’s golden era of artist drawn tarots.
Spare’s deck had been lost to the world until its chance rediscovery in 2013 within the collection of The Magic Circle Museum in London. Had it not remained hidden from public view for so long, Spare’s creation could have significantly influenced tarot’s wider cultural development. The deck’s design is highly unusual for combining cartomancy and taromancy, and for the complex system of interconnecting visual motifs that link many of the cards across their borders.
This new edition contains a substantial amount of new and revised material, including a major new discovery about Spare’s sources for the attributions on his deck, hitherto unknown.
Co-published by Strange Attractor Press & The Magic Circle
UK Import
Deck of 78 cards on high quality matt laminate card stock + 18 pages booklet
13 x 8 x 14 cm cardboard box
Born within the sound of Bow Wells, Austin Osman Spare’s early intrest in art and the occult would remain with him throughout his life. After a turbulent career at the Roxyal College of Art and a pre-War period as a Mayfair enfant terrible, Spare’s star later waned and despite a modest renaissance at the end of his life, he died penniless and largely forgotten. Championed posthumously an an ousider, a sorcerer, a mystic and a shaman, Spare was above all else a powerful artist whose myth and reputation continue to grow long after his death.
An enlarged facsimile edition of Austin Osman Spare’s c1906 tarot deck, retaining his idiosyncratic edge-designs that create a unique and dynamic additional dimension for interpretation
In the first decade of the 20th century, the English artist Austin Osman Spare (1886-1956) hand painted a remarkable deck of fortune-telling cards. Produced in around 1906, this glowing relic of the British Occult Revival is thought to have been the young artist’s personal training deck, and it conveys the excitement and experimentation of a period that laid the early foundations for todays’s golden era of artist drawn tarots.
Spare’s deck had been lost to the world until its chance rediscovery in 2013 within the collection of The Magic Circle Museum in London. Had it not remained hidden from public view for so long, Spare’s creation could have significantly influenced tarot’s wider cultural development. The deck’s design is highly unusual for combining cartomancy and taromancy, and for the complex system of interconnecting visual motifs that link many of the cards across their borders.
This new edition contains a substantial amount of new and revised material, including a major new discovery about Spare’s sources for the attributions on his deck, hitherto unknown.
Co-published by Strange Attractor Press & The Magic Circle
UK Import
Deck of 78 cards on high quality matt laminate card stock + 18 pages booklet
13 x 8 x 14 cm cardboard box
Born within the sound of Bow Wells, Austin Osman Spare’s early intrest in art and the occult would remain with him throughout his life. After a turbulent career at the Roxyal College of Art and a pre-War period as a Mayfair enfant terrible, Spare’s star later waned and despite a modest renaissance at the end of his life, he died penniless and largely forgotten. Championed posthumously an an ousider, a sorcerer, a mystic and a shaman, Spare was above all else a powerful artist whose myth and reputation continue to grow long after his death.
