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U.S. Games Systems

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U. S. Games Systems is a publisher of playing cards and games located in Stamford, Connecticut. Founded in 1968 by Stuart R. Kaplan, it has published hundreds of different card sets, and about 20 new titles are released annually. The company's product line includes children's card games, museum products, educational cards, motivational cards, tarot cards, and other fortune telling card decks. These are marketed through a network of retailers, including bookstores, museum gift shops, metaphysical shops, greeting card stores; toy and game stores; hobby shops, and mail order catalogs.

The company's logo is a silhouette of The Fool tarot card, taken from the drawing by Pamela Colman Smith for the Rider-Waite Tarot, the company's best-selling product. Other tarot sets published by U.S. Games include a traditional Tarot of Marseilles, two Visconti tarots, an Oswald Wirth tarot, and the Thoth Tarot designed by Aleister Crowley and drawn by Freda Harris. The company is also known for its commitment to novel interpretations of the tarot, featuring new artwork in a variety of styles and formats. Some of the best known of these are the hippie-indfluenced Aquarian tarot, the borderless Morgan-Greer tarot, the circular Motherpeace tarot, and the Tarot of the Witches by Fergus Hall, which was featured in the James Bond movie Casino Royale (film), starring Sean Connery.

Popular playing card games published by U.S. Games include the Wizard Card Game, Authors, the Natural World Series, American Revolution and American Civil War Games, the Creative Whack Pack, Mystery Rummy, and Continuo.

In the 1970s, the company branched out into publishing books about the history of tarot. Stuart Kaplan co-wrote with Jean Huets the four-volumeEncyclopedia of Tarot, which was published over the course of many years. Kaplan's interest in Pamela Colman Smith’s work as a theatrical set designer and costumer, as well s her involvement with the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and her collaboration with the noted occultist Arthur Edward Waite on the Rider-Waite deck led him to research and co-write Pamela Colman Smith: The Untold Story with Mary Katherine Greer, ‎Elizabeth Foley O'Connor, and Melinda Boyd Parsons. In 2009 U.S. Games published a commemorative Rider-Waite box set including Smith's cards, and a selecton of her art prints, and a book by Kaplan. In 2021, shortly before Kaplan's death, the company announced the publication of the Rider-Waite Playing Card Deck, a fusion of Smith's occult art with the tarot's origin as a simple card game.

References

  1. ^ "U. S. Games - About Us". Retrieved 2021-03-01.
  2. "A Cultural History of Tarot: From Entertainment to Esotericism" by Helen Farley (2009), I.B.Tauris.
  3. "Pamela Colman Smith at the Dawn of Modernism" in Retrievals by Garrett Caples (2004), Wave Books.