C-Arts

Published February 13, 2023 • Updated February 13, 2023

Collective Arts pack designed by sixty-three collaborating artists, illustrators and designers, Russia, 2003.

C-Arts is the acronym of “Collective Arts”, a platform for creating and running creative projects and competitions in the fields of art, illustration, design and photography. The organisation also works with commercial brands, festivals, and the film industry.

This pack of 52 cards and 10 jokers was produced in the summer of 2003. Sixty-three artists, illustrators and designers worked together, with each creating one card in their own particular and unique style. The sixty-third card takes the form of an extra 11 of clubs. The pack comes with an extra card which lists every card and the name of the artist responsible. The jokers were drawn by major figures of Russian design and illustration, including the Russian-Israeli artist Oleg Kuvaev and Aleksei Solov’ev. The card back was designed by Artemii Lebedev. See the extra card►

Collective Arts pack designed by sixty-three collaborating artists, illustrators and designers, Russia, 2003

Above: Collective Arts pack designed by sixty-three collaborating artists, illustrators and designers, Russia, 2003. 52 cards and 10 jokers plus an extra card.

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By Peter Burnett

United Kingdom • Member since July 27, 2022

I graduated in Russian and East European Studies from Birmingham University in 1969. It was as an undergraduate in Moscow in 1968 that I stumbled upon my first 3 packs of “unusual” playing cards which fired my curiosity and thence my life-long interest. I began researching and collecting cards in the early 1970s, since when I’ve acquired over 3,330 packs of non-standard cards, mainly from North America, UK and Western Europe, and of course from Russia and the former communist countries.

• Russian Playing Cards

Following my retirement from the Bodleian Library in Dec. 2007 I took up a new role as Head of Library Development at the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP) to support library development in low-income countries. This work necessitated regular training visits to many sub-Saharan African countries and also further afield, to Vietnam, Nepal and Bangladesh – all of which provided rich opportunities to further expand my playing card collection.

Since 2019 I’ve been working part-time in the Bodleian Library where I’ve been cataloguing the bequest of the late Donald Welsh, founder of the English Playing Card Society.