Crown Hill playing cards

Published August 22, 2024 • Updated August 22, 2024

Crown Hill playing cards with illustrations by Corrine Guiney, USA,

This pack was produced by Hill Enterprises of Gualala, California, in 1980. The original artwork used to produce these cards is by the illustrator, Corrine Guiney. She often painted with a single hair art brush to get the beautiful detail that is seen in these cards. She is also known for her illustrations in two very rare miniature books: Beauty and the Beast (1982), and A Pressing Problem: Being the True Story of the Printer's Devil (1982). Each card is displayed against a cream/pale yellow oval background, with the Aces designed in the style of coats-of-arms and the court cards dressed in highly decorative and colourful medieval courtly costume. There are two slightly different humorous jokers. The cards were originally published as a double pack.

Crown Hill playing cards with illustrations by Corrine Guiney, produced by Hill Enterprises of Gualala, California, in 1980

Above: Crown Hill playing cards with illustrations by Corrine Guiney, produced by Hill Enterprises of Gualala, California, in 1980.

533 Articles

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.