Color Study of RWS?

[bogiesan]

I got my W-S decks stacked up and then sorted each, grouping by predominant background color, looking for interesting patterns or similarities between the packs and the printings. There are only a few cards that have common backgrounds among all decks: the blacks are basically the same (9 swoards, 10 swords, Tower, Devil) and the Emperor is always orange. THe rest do not seem to have any patterns or correlations. The night cards like Moon, Star, 2 swords, Hermit are not consistently dark blue.

US Games "Original", indistinct and and got that green thing going on
US Games "Centennial", got that artifical aging thing but I like the coloration, lines are not as crisp as my 40-year old Rider
1970 Rider, the cleanest and sharpest lines, best colors. It's a classic.
Albano-Waite, current edition, a muddy reprint by photreproduction

Next exercise for me is to lay out the cards as they might have appeared on the press sheets to see if there is a pattern in coloration, say, a a deliberate fading from a dark blue or green to the more parchment-like version of the same hue.

Fun stuff. Meaningless. But fun.

[LRichard]

Besides the hideous current RWS, my most trustworthy deck colorwise may be an early 1980s deck. I used to think that it was anemic-looking with washed-out colors, but I now think it may be the best I have. I also have a Belgian mini and a Chinese pocket, which are very pretty and brightly colored. For Albano, my 1980s Belgian-German deck is exquisite. The current USG printing is almost repulsive.

[rwcarter]

When I get around to this, I'll likely use my Pam B as a base and then look at the USG yellow-box as a comparison.

[gregory]

You want to get jackdaw*in on this - she is currently studying and colouring it herself...

[LRichard]

Originally Posted by gregory

You want to get jackdaw*in on this - she is currently studying and colouring it herself...

Wouldn't she lean toward the Albano colors? Maybe I should PM her about this. She is very savvy about the RWS.

[jackdaw*]

I do like the Albano (ie, Case) colours, but a look at the "real" colours wouldn't be a bad idea. One can only take so many olive green skies.

I has the USG pocket edition Rider Waite, but can view kenji's scans of Pam A, etc., online.

Thanks, gregory, for steering me here

[LRichard]

I think the green skies in the Pentacles are entirely Frankie's fault. What was s/he thinking?

ETA. Partial answer. Green and red are a pair of "flashing colors" (so designated by the Golden Dawn). I.e., they are complementary colors which dynamically interract in the human eye and brain. However, this doesn't seem to work in the Albano. Maybe the color hues are wrong, or maybe the effect is inhibited by the black outlines between the colors.