About this item
- The Gilded Reverie Lenormand has the traditional 36 cards of a Lenormand-style deck, illustrated in Ciro Marchetti's
- lush and inimitable style. Published by US Games, the cards have gilded edges and are packaged in a neat little
- hardback box.
Specifications
Name
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Gilded Reverie Lenormand
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Creators
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Ciro Marchetti
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Publisher
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US Games 2013
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Deck Type
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Oracle Deck
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Cards
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36
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Card Size
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2.75 x 4.00 in. = 6.99cm x 10.16cm
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Card Language
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None
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Card Back
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Reversible
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Back Design
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Black and red chessboard pattern with gold curlicues overlaid
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Reviews
The Gilded Reverie Lenormand by Ciro Marchetti is
a stunningly beautiful, very solid,
digitally-painted deck. The cards are 2.75 by 4 inches, bigger than
poker size playing cards (2.5 by 3.5 inches), but not by
much—and they are incredibly thick. The 36 cards together
stack up to almost an inch. I think this is really nice.
The cards have enough give that I believe they could
be shuffled the way one shuffles playing cards, but I
can't honestly say I've tried it—I prefer not to bend
the cards I read with, personally. The gilded edges on
the cards are absolutely stunning. I've heard some
people refer to gold borders on these cards--this is
incorrect. The borders are just as shown in the pictures here
on Aeclectic: they fade to black. It is the edges of
the card, the actual sides of the stock, that are
gilded, not the border. That is to say, the gilding is on
the third dimension. The gilding is more beautiful in
person than I imagined, and is very reflective. The only
downside to the gilding is that straight out of the box it
is helping my cards stick together a little more than
I would like them to for ideal shuffling. I assume
this will fade with time (it's gotten better just over
the past day or two), so I'm not worried, but I
thought I should mention it.
There is also gold in the
color printing on the cards' fronts (the numbered
circle, playing card suit and number, and filigree
corners) and backs (the circle and filigree ornamentation),
but the gold on the faces of the cards is well-done
photoshop artistry rather than gold ink or gold leafing. The
whole of each card (front and back) is very glossy, but
the gold-colored parts are no more
shiny/glossy/reflective/etc than the other parts. In one final attempt at
clarity, the gold on the faces of the cards, just like all
the other imagery on the faces of the cards, is made
up merely of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black
(CMYK).This is impressive rather than disappointing.
The card
backs are perfectly reversible except for the (C)2013 US
GAMES copyright text that appears only in the lower
right corner. The backs have a beautiful, deep red,
diagonally-checkered design that pairs beautifully with the same design
in goldenrod tones on the inside of the box. The box,
by the way, is one of the better examples of
packaging for a deck (Lenormand, Tarot, or otherwise) that I
have ever seen. It's a very sturdy cardboard box with
magnetic closure that opens like a book. The paper used to
print the box artwork has a smooth, leathery feel that
I'm just about in love with. The cover of the box has
a version of Marchetti's artwork for the Birds card,
and the box (unlike the faces of the cards) DOES have
gold foil accents on the birdhouse, lace border, the
“G” and “R” in “Gilded Reverie,” et cetera. The box is
exactly the right size to hold the cards, the 48-page LWB
(Little White Book), and nothing else, which I think is
perfect. There's no cardboard support inside for the sole
purpose of taking up space, which is good because it means
there's no cardboard support to get smushed and let your
cards move around all over the place. This is also good
because it means the box is small enough to fit
comfortably in even a rather small purse or a large clutch.
The included LWB is good enough for most purposes — I'm
certainly totally happy to accept it instead of a full-size
book, the tradeoff being the beautiful, condensed
packaging. It starts with an introduction by Tali Goodwin,
followed by a note from Ciro Marchetti. Each card
description has a short vignette (some of them with some
rather poorly-written rhymes, but I'm willing to ignore
that) written in the first person from the card's point
of view (by Rana George), followed by a further
description written by Tali Goodwin. The vignettes and
descriptions have been edited and approved by Ciro Marchetti to
reflect his personal feelings on the deck. Here, as an
example, is the text for card 1, The Rider:
I am always
bringing news, look around me to see what it includes. I
might be coming to visit or bringing you some changes. I
am fast and always on the move. If you see a negative
card close by, you will probably not enjoy the
reply.
The Rider of the Lenormand brings news. It is the
first card and announces new things. In the Gilded
Reverie deck, we behold a dreamy female Rider who sits
astride a carousel horse; the horse who in fairy-tale
stories is the conveyer of messages. She may even be Iris,
the Greek messenger of the Gods.
The fastened
messenger bag across her shoulder may be suggestive of
additional messages for different destinations along her
night's voyage. In her hands she grasps a white envelope,
a letter that is out of the bag and ready to be
delivered for the current reading. The carousel is the ideal
metaphor, as this card is a new cycle being initiated and an
ending of the old state. The ups and downs of the
carousel also symbolize the magical flight that powers this
messenger to its destination. Freed from the ever revolving
'merry-go-round of life,' whose circular motion is also defined by
the laws of physics as acceleration, our rider
symbolically reflects the pace and speed of information by
which our lives are increasingly affected.
The LWB
finishes with three spreads, each with an accompanying
sample reading: the “Simple Nine-Card Spread” by Tali
Goodwin, “The Fortune-Telling Day Spread” by Tali Goodwin,
and “The Chocolate Bar Spread” by Rana George. The
Nine-Card Spread is particularly useful for readers just
getting used to Lenormand, and The Fortune-Telling Day
Spread is meant to help you track and improve your
reading accuracy with daily readings each morning. The
Chocolate Bar Spread is one of those spreads that seems
totally valid and sensical except that I can find not a
single explanation for what it has to do with chocolate,
so the whole thing ends up feeling kind of odd to me.
You may find this useful or endearing—to each his/her
own. Should you be unsatisfied with the included LWB, a
140-page .pdf companion book in full-color is available for
purchase and download on Marchetti's own website. I have not purchased it, but am likely to do so
soon.
One final note on the LWB — this would normally be a
note about the cards, but the cards themselves are only
numbered, not named, so the names of the cards only appear
in the LWB. For the cards that sometimes vary in
exact name, I give their names here: card 9 is
“Flowers,” 11 is “Birch/Broom,” 20 is “Park,” 22 is “Choice,”
28 is “Man,” 29 is “Lady,” and 30 is “Lilies”
(plural). Now for the actual cards!
The art on the cards is
absolutely gorgeous. I am not partial to digital artwork, and
while much of Ciro Marchetti's other work is objectively
beautiful and well-done, I don't feel drawn to it or
necessarily like it. This deck is different. There is
something more traditional, I think, about the basic imagery
in this deck, that makes for something very beautiful
when that traditional imagery is treated the way
Marchetti has done. The images seem simultaneously to pop
off the surface of the cards and to lie behind the
surface of the cards, as if in a diorama or behind a
window. Someone else said these cards almost appeared to
glow as if they were lit from behind. It is true.
A
note to those who rely on the playing card
correspondences on Lenormand cards: card 18, the Dog, is
incorrectly attributed in this deck to the 10 of Spades,
rather than the 10 of Hearts. The 10 of Spades is also
(correctly) attributed to card 3, the Ship. I am given to
understand that future printings of this deck will have this
corrected, but if this bothers you greatly, you may want to
hold off for now and wait for a later printing. I
personally am not bothered by this small error, and I find it
rather endearing that the error occurred on the Dog, so
loyal and eager-to-please. I have actually let the
knowledge of this error color my impression of the dog card
and the way I interpret it in readings, and I like
that. It could also make for a very interesting
interpretation if and when both 10s of Spades show up in
combination.
The illustrations on each card are very detailed, in
addition to being very beautiful. The Clouds card, 6, is a
particularly great example of this, with the bright half of the
clouds being dotted with soaring birds, and the dark half
broken with lightning striking the tree of the previous
card. What this has meant in my readings so far is that
while the key to reading these cards is usually in being
very literal and reading right off the surface, the
layers of imagery underneath can also contribute meaning
when the top layer isn't quite enough. For example,
behind the Key (33) sits a birdcage which houses a rose;
and the Child (13) contemplates a storybook from which
blooms a castle, a rainbow, a doll, a ball, a spinning
top, and several blocks, which display the letters CM
and GRL — standing for Ciro Marchetti and Gilded Reverie
Lenormand. You might guess from this that Marchetti has
hidden his initials (CM) in every card, and you would be
correct.
On top of being very detailed and very beautiful,
this deck is very enjoyable and easy to read. I have
performed several successful readings for myself and others
since receiving this deck, and I look forward to a long
journey together.
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