If you have come here from another site which linked directly to this page, please click here to go to the main page or to the table of contents.
Linweave Tarot Pack
by David Mario Palladini, Ron Rae, Hy Roth, and Nicolas Sidjakov
for Linweave Creative Papers

Yes, you're seeing the right name there.  One of the artists for this deck was David Palladini, creator of the Aquarian Tarot and the New Palladini Tarot, years before his own decks were ever published.  What a weird, huge, cool, bizarre, interesting, and neat deck this is.  Almost every adjective I can think of fits it in some form.  Created in 1967 by the Brown Company, at the time of its business merger/buyout of Linweave Papers, the deck was produced as a special promotional item to showcase the different and various types and colors of creative print papers the company manufactured and sold.  However, they took the tarot connection seriously, and produced a tarot pack that was very closely based on antique Marseille style tarots from France.  The cards were made so as to be useable as an oracle, and come with instructions for use to that effect.
 
This deck is more than just the Major Arcana, but not a full deck either.  It includes the entire 22 Major cards, the four Aces, and all sixteen court cards, but excludes the numbered cards 2 through 10 in each suit.  Considering that this deck is based on the Marseille Tarot, I can see why these cards were excluded since they are, in that type of deck, very bland and uninteresting in design.  As this deck was created to showcase paper design, one could understand omitting uninteresting cards!
 
The cards are titled in the original French, and are numbered with Roman numerals in the older style (with 4 being represented by IIII instead of IV) and follow the European tradition of having Justice for 8 and Strength (Force) for 11.  The Fool is unnumbered.  Each card is printed on a different color of cardstock and many different kinds of textured weave are used.  On the front of each card the image appears with the number at the top and the title at the bottom; on the back is the name of the card within a large text box and the divinatory meanings are printed right there for ease of use.  At the bottom of the text box a small paragraph explains which card stock and color are used and names the artist who did each card.  Each artist took one suit (Palladini took swords, Rae took coins, Roth took cups, and Sidjakov took batons) and the Majors have been fairly evenly split up amongst the four.

As stated above, the Minor Arcana in this deck consists of the Aces from each suit and the court cards from each suit.  The numbered cards have been skipped altogether, eliminating the need to ask whether they have scenes or are just pip cards.  The suits used in this pack are Epees (Swords), Coppe (cups), Batons (Clubs or wands) and Denier (coins or Pence).  Again, as with the Majors, all cards are printed on different colors and textures of stock.

The cards themselves are really large (approximately 5 and 1/2 inches wide and  8 inches long).  As previously mentioned, cardstock varies from card to card in color, texture and weight, but at this size even shirt cardboard would be flexible.  Shuffling them is a gas.  The edges are all cut to a uniform smoothness and the corners are round.  There is no back design because the backs feature the divinatory meanings and descriptions of the card.  The little white booklet is actually a large folded sheet lithographed on Linweave quality Tarotext, color Olde Gold.  Hardly white!  The deck is also accompanied by a folded card which tells the history of the tarot in brief encapsulated format on Olive Mist cardstock.
 
One thing that really irritated me, though it's a very small thing, is the description on the front page of the booklet that comes with this deck.  It's the introduction to "How to tell your fortune with the Linweave Tarot Pack" and the wording is definitely phrased as though it were addressing only men.  The phrase at the end: "Try it out.  With a little practice, you can become a BMAP (Big Man at Parties), and your mother will start referring to you as 'My son the prophet.' "

I absolutely recommend this deck for collectors.  It's quite old though and very hard to find, there were never a lot of these around as they were printed as promotional material, but their availability is further compounded by the fact that they were released in 1967 and not printed later than that.  The only place I've seen these available has been on eBay (www.ebay.com).  These are not the kind of deck anyone would buy unless they were taking their collecting seriously.  They could be used by a beginner, but really there are much better decks out there for actually *reading* with.....
 
Click here for pictures

or here to return

Please use your browser's back button to return from pictures

Review Copyright 2000 by Gina M. Pace

Linweave Tarot Pack, 1967
published by Brown Company
Pulp, Paper and Board Division
277 Park Avenue
New York, NY  10017