bohemia

This deck is the second one in a series of six in total. The designs were done as gouaches, so a different technique than in the first "Blue Blood" deck. This gives the deck a different nature and although a different style in design was used too, Linnea's "signature" is still recognizable.

The production of this second deck didn't go flawless. Twice the USPCC made a mistake: first the boxes were not made of the correct material, then the backs of the cards were printed off center. Even big, established names in the playing card industry seem to have their off-days. Usually we don't hear about them, but because the publication of this deck was pre-financed as a Kickstarter project, the Uusi Studio kept us informed of every delay in deliverance. These unexpected delays explain why the extra card is dated 2012, although the deck didn't get to the market until the end of January 2013. I think we were one of the first international buyers on the shipping list and we received the deck in the beginning of February. But....... it was well worth waiting for.

"The artwork for Bohemia was inspired by the unlikely pairing of 17th-century Baroque style with contemporary, urban street art. Each have a flair for drama, tension and grandeur that when mixed together create one lush, combustible style!
All imagery in the deck is taken from entirely hand-painted, gouache illustrations. Every single card, right down to the pips and indices is painted in varying shades of luminous blue for the dark suits of Spades and Clubs and lushly romantic red for the light suits of Hearts and Diamonds."

Although we had asked for it in October, they still remembered our request and both artists have signed the Ace of Spades for us. THANKS!

Just like the Ace of Clubs, the Ace of Hearts is plain. The aces have a vague background design with curved lines, which is repeated on all the pips. The courts and jokers also have this design in the background, but now with a few brownish accents on the sides. That the suit signs were drawn individually, certainly applies to the courts, but on the pips in each suit there are a number of suit signs with a striking similarity. We suspect that some of these have been digitally copied and edited for multiple use.

"Fifty-two playing cards and two jokers, all with unique art, ideal for magic and card games due to being unique and eye-catching, yet at the same time very familiar and immediately recognizable by players and spectators alike. Bohemia is a true original."

Players like to be able to recognize their cards in a wink. In the days before the introduction of corner indices, the images were the only distinguishing objects. Hence the popularity of standard patterns, either regional or national, of which some have a history of hundreds of years. Some of these regional standard patterns still have no indices, but their designs haven't changed over the years and (regional) players have grown up with them, so they don't have any problems with recognizing the cards.
In the Bohemia deck, a true original and non-standard deck, "facial recognition" has been made easy too. Even if we would take the indices away, the Queens -just like in most patterns- are easily recognizable. Although two of the kings are hatless and only one holds regalia, it would still be simple to conclude that in this deck the jacks are all on horseback, which makes quick identification of all the courts very easy. With or without indices.

The joker is 99.9% double imaged, only the small dark spot between the red head and the word joker isn't repeated on the blue side. Only on the jokers four circular shapes (bells?) have been added to the vague background design. The figure on the extra card holds a vague banner with the black initial B and is dated 2012.

This deck comes from the "red" edition, which was limited to 3500 decks. There is also a "blue" edition, in which blue is used for the red parts in the back design and box. No numbers for this edition were given, so these will still be available.
Order at uusi.us

After this second deck we can hardly wait for the next!

The red deck comes with a special Bohemia seal, but the USPCC has also put this seal on 80 blue decks, of which 50 can be bought at the Uusi website too.