Tag Archives: playing cards

Continuing our strand on a pack of cards to jog your pop-culture memory, we thought we’d take a look at who’d make the cut as the queens of the pack.  Rather than go for the obvious homage to figures from the past and respect for our present monarch, we thought a slight shuffle of the pack could proved interesting, so here’s our take on history’s greatest drag acts. Devine Known  to mainstream audiences for appearing as Ricki Lake’s mother in John Waters’ original Hairspray movie (the role that John Travolta would later play in the 2007 version), Divine appeared in …

So, we’ve seen how cards can and have been used as an Aide-mémoire for everything from plane silhouettes to the revolutionary ideals you must be keeping as you lead a few powdered dowagers up the steps of the guillotine. But what if you woke up tomorrow with acute pop-culture amnesia from some kind of soap-opera level trauma? Here are the cards that would bring you back up to speed with the kings of the 20th and 21st century. King of Spades Starting with the obvious, the original King, Elvis Presley.   Even if he wasn’t ‘the King’, you’d be hard …

The idea of using playing cards as convenient portable, entertainment for troops in the field as well as a useful aide-memoire for fighting men and women has a surprisingly long history. The most notorious example of course is the “most wanted” cards issued by the Americans during the Iraq war. Using the standard 52 card deck as a weapon of propaganda and compact way or whiling away the time goes back as far as the American Civil War. The French Revolution The symbolic power of cards obviously has a precedent in continental Europe’s tarot, but the change that swept through …

Since there were so many superb playing card artists and artwork out there, we thought that this deserved a second post, and this time it’s all about sculpture. Ok, it’s not really an artwork as such, but there is something artistic about a mountain of cash and chips like this one we are calling ‘Jamies Rakeback win’ 1) Ok, on with the art, this is a final degree piece by a Leeds University Fine art student you can see more houses of playing cards on Flickr 2) A huge house of cards in the desert built in Death Valley 3) …

Art comes in all shapes and sizes; you only have to visit the Tate Britain and marvel at the weird and wonderful concepts that beget the Turner Prize to see that. Early mans painting on rocks has now shifted from paper to the human body; artists will always find a canvas for their latest works and so we looked to playing cards for our inspiration. From the very first playing cards of the Ming Dynasty, card games have both featured art and appeared in them. Even some gambling adverts can be modest works of art, this full tilt poker advert …