Sharman Caselli

The Sharman-Caselli Tarot Deck
Juliet Sharman-Burke & Giovanni Caselli (Connections, 2001)

Review
There's something a bit odd going here.

Oh, I don't mean the artwork, which is not a clone of the Rider-Waite, but certainly bears a family resemblance. Granted, a couple of the noses are a little bulbous, which gives all the Knights the same expression as their horses, but the line work itself is detailed and rather gorgeously cod-medieval in places. Though it does prompt a question I've always vaguely wondered- when depicting male nudes, as there a technical arty term for the awkward twisting of a thigh to obscure the privates? Breasts and buttocks appear to be fine, however.

No, the problem lies in the actual production values of the deck. For a start, mine has 79 cards in it- there's two Kings of Pentacles. At first I wondered if perhaps there were subtle variations between the two cards, leading to a particularly occult-flavoured game of spot-the-difference. But no, it was just a production mistake. As to was the first one through of the major Arcana, where I looked upon Strength- and then Temperance and The Tower. It took a couple of minutes to shuffle the Majors into the correct order, and to check that they were in fact all present. I can't entirely blame whoever packed the deck in its cellophane- the Majors are actually unnumbered. I can, however, wondered at whoever chose the world's most boring card backs (the copyright notice means it's not even symmetrical!) and who changed the Two of Swords from the pink-and-purple outfit with green trim that she's wearing on the box cover to an all-blue colour scheme on the card itself.

It's a damn shame really, because these production mistakes let down a deck that's enjoys line work far more delicate than the dear old R-W, but is sufficiently familiar and clear in its meaning that a beginner would find this a very good starter deck.