The Chamber of 52 Cards
Playing cards published by Peter Wood as a tribute to the rock band Genesis.
This pack was published by Peter Wood in 2006, in a limited edition of 500 copies, as a tribute to the progressive rock band Genesis. The images on each card are based on the band’s music, live shows, albums and lyrics. The title is a play on “The Chamber of 32 Doors” from Genesis's 1974 album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. There is an extra card listing the album tracks or songs represented by the illustrations on the 52 cards and the two jokers. The jokers are “Slipperman” (the costume worn by Peter Gabriel as he performed as "The Slipperman", during the album show The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway) and “Watcher”, referring to “Watcher of the skies” the only single released from the 1972 album Foxtrot. See the box
Above: The Chamber of 52 cards published by Peter Wood in 2006.
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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