Our first Tarot de Marseille deck restoration was the Nicolas Conver tarot. One of the oddities that we noticed about this deck is what appears to be 5 cards painted with lime green. These cards are the Ace of Coins, Six of Batons, Two of Cups, Two of Coins, and Ace of Cups.
This is strange because no other cards have this color in the entire deck.
If lime green was intentional, why did Nicolas Conver only paint it on these cards?
Let’s take a close examination of these cards. The image above shows the original cards found in the National Library of France. You can see that the lime green really stands out.
The image above shows the cards from our review decks. You can see that we colored these cards with lime green to try to match the originals. We also posted this image on our Instagram account and mentioned the strangeness of the lime green.
However, upon further review, we believe that the lime green is actually light blue. To understand this, let’s take a look at the painting process.
The Painting Process
The original cards were painted with stencils placed on top of the uncut sheets. Then, a brush was used to paint within the stenciled area. We believe that with these cards, the stencil included the entire area of the image. The deck creators didn’t mark off the areas that shouldn’t have been yellow.
After the yellow was painted, they took another stencil and painted light blue on top. When the yellow and light blue mixed, it created the lime green that you see. This overprint happens with the other colors as well, but it doesn’t show because they are more pigmented, opaque, and are a darker shade.
In fact, if you zoom in on the original cards, you can still see the light blue that hasn’t mixed with the yellow.
It’s interesting to note that some restorations, like the CBD deck, have the lime green color while others, like the Jodorowsky deck, have the light blue color.
So, is lime green found in the Nicolas Conver tarot?
Well, it depends on how you see it. Light blue was originally used to color the cards; however, when mixed with yellow, it became green.
We believe the light blue makes the images richer. It also stays true to the limited color palette that was used to paint the cards. So, in our restoration we have updated the lime green to light blue.
The third image is an updated render with blue that will be on our Nicolas Conver deck.
Talk with you soon,
William Rader
Krisztin Kondor
