SilkAir
SilkAir was a Singaporean regional airline and a wholly owned subsidiary of Singapore Airlines.
This 56-card pack includes 2 red and 2 black jokers and was produced by SilkAir, Singapore (before March 2019 when the Silkair website was discontinued). The faces of the court cards are loosely based on the standard pattern, but the bodies appear to be dressed in Asian-style robes.
SilkAir was a Singaporean regional airline, a wholly owned subsidiary of Singapore Airlines. It operated scheduled passenger services from Singapore to 28 cities in 13 countries in Southeast Asia, the Indian Subcontinent, East Asia, and Northern Australia. In May 2018, Singapore Airlines announced that the SilkAir fleet would be fully merged into the parent company. As part of the merger, SilkAir's website was discontinued and integrated into Singapore Airlines' website on 31 March 2019. The integration of SilkAir’s actual operations with Singapore Airlines began in March 2021 and was completed in May 2021. The integration was made to deliver greater economies of scale for the Group, and enhance the flexibility of aircraft deployment to meet the demand for air travel as it returned following the Covid-19 pandemic.
Above: SilkAir promotional playing cards, c.2015. 52 cards + 4 jokers.
By Peter Burnett
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.
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.
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