I Gatti Originali di Evelyne Nicod

Evelyne Nicod is known for her artistic creations linked to the world of the cat. In this set of black-and-white etchings for the major arcana, cats replace humans throughout. The designs are clever and mildly humorous. The card titles are in French. This, the first printing, was a numbered edition of 1,500 packs (with a separate edition of 500 packs for the American market). One of the two accompanying leaflets has an introductory presentation by Pina Andronico Tosonotti; the other is one of Osvaldo Menegazzi’s standard leaflets (in Italian) for reading the Tarot. See the cover►

Above: “I Gatti Originali di Evelyne Nicod” major arcana created by Evelyne Nicod, published by Il Meneghello di O. Menegazzi, Milan, Italy, 1985. 22 cards + 1 title card + 2 leaflets, in red and black marbled cover tied with red ribbon. Size: 74.5 x 110 mm.

References

Kaplan, Stuart R. The Encyclopedia of Tarot, Volume III. Stamford, CT, USA: U.S. Games Systems, Inc.; 1990. pp 137 & 138.

Note

I also have two individual designs on handmade paper, one for a title card and one for trump XIIII. I no longer remember how I come to have these. The designs differ from the published pack discussed above and the format is also different, being 79 x 123 mm approx . If anyone has more information about these items, please get in touch.

Reply from Evelyne Nicod

The two cards in the Note above are etchings printed on heavy hand made paper, as you can see from the irregular edges. Difficult to print, the paper was put in water for about 10 seconds. The print run was 50. After that the quality decays dramatically.

Reference can be found: on this page►

I don't remember having sold individual cards. But on the botton left it is marked "pda" which means "prova d'autore", usually printed before the regular run, and then usually exchanged with other artists.

The original deck sold by Menegazzi dates 1985. It was printed in a limited edition of 1.500, but as they were continously sold on the market, I checked and the card with the number, in your case 651, was black instead than red. I made him stop, destroy and send to me the remaining decks, cut, and printed the second edition under my registerd trade name of Gatteria. Subsequenly a deck illustrated by Menegazzi was sold in USA and worldwide under my name, it would have been too expensive to sue him in USA. I stopped any business recently at the time of Covid.

You could provide a link to the page telling all the story, and describing the different versions, 2 B/W, colour, etching, fake: www.gatteria.it/gatteria/tarocchi.htm►
The genuine edition title cards must be red like the one you are showing. If black, it is not the original deck. I can confirm that the cards you have in red are the real original 1985 deck; "enicod" was and is my signature. Illegal printing runs were made and to lower the printing cost everything was printed in black. So any existing deck with that card black is NOT an original deck, but an illegal imitation. A warning to watch for any illegal deck sold nowadays on ebay, not worth the 150 euros asked for.