A Bouquet of Pheasants
A Bouquet of Pheasants playing cards produced by Jennifer Gaudion, United Kingdom, 2019.
This is the third pack produced by artist Jennifer Gaudion. It is an imaginative and colourful semi-transformation pack illustrating animal collective nouns (also known as “terms of venery”) with 54 gouache paintings. The pack is accompanied by a leaflet providing information about the theme and the artwork, and also listing the content of each card (e.g. seven of clubs = a Tank of swans; eight of spades = a Dazzle of zebra). See the leaflet►
Above: A Bouquet of Pheasants playing cards produced by Jennifer Gaudion, United Kingdom, 2019.
See the box►
By Peter Burnett
United Kingdom • Member since July 27, 2022 • Contact
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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