These decks are one of the most interesting decks printed by USPCC. All custom – even pips on each number card. Playing cards designed by Australian artist Brett A. Jones.
The distinguishing feature of the English standard playing card is that the Jacks are lansquenets – mighty warriors or foot soldiers. With such a rich and illustrious subject matter, nothing needed to be added that wasn’t already there. All that was needed was to give each of the characters dimension and expression. Nothing was done to disturb the basic foundation of the deck. Rather, conscious decisions were made to preserve and extend the tradition. Each and every card in the WhiteKnuckle Deck is a unique hand rendering in keeping with the style. Where ambiguity gave way to artistic license, reference was made to its ancestor, the French Rouen design.
The deck: 52 playing cards + 2 Jokers + Blank card + Information card. Poker size.
There were three editions of this deck. The decks edition and year of release can be identified on the bottom of the box (e.g. the first edition deck was brought out in 2010 so the numbers would be 1-10).
The First Edition (these were published in Sydney in March, 2010).
Several 1st edition rare decks are still available on Brett’s site.
The Second Red Edition
The Third Blue Edition
Right from the start Brett wanted to bring all the design elements of the whole deck together on the back of the card to clearly connect it with the overall design. It seemed natural that the front and back of every card should be an obvious part of the same overall design concept. The cardback was also the only place where all the different suits colour schemes could come together.
The cardback had to be diagonally symmetrical but have all the design features and all the suit symbols incorporated. First designed a white celtic knot comprised of two of each of the suit symbols all interlocked, overlapping and vertically and horizontally symmetrical. Then quartered the card (inside the white border) and made the four corners diagonally symmetrical with deep red for the two red suits and dark indigo blue for the two black suits.
He then ran four overlapping suit symbols down each side, red suits in the red corners, black suits in the indigo blue corners. A spiral runs through and each suit symbols secondary and tertiary colours to pick their shapes out of the background colour, like you are looking through the spiral into the red and indigo blue. This put the same subtle tinge to the various suits that they display on the actual deck and allowed him to go another layer deep.
The card back is the only place in the whole deck all the different suits appear together in their respective colour schemes and connects every card in the deck singly and collectively directly to the back design.
READ MORE ABOUT THIS DECK HERE
Aces
All court cards are clickable
Jacks
Queens
Kings
Number Cards
Jokers
Information Card + Blank Card (Front / Back)
PLAYING CARDS + ART = COLLECTING 