Map of the world in full bloom

Published November 03, 2023 • Updated November 03, 2023

Map of the world in full bloom, USA, 2017

Wendy Gold is a San Francisco-based decorative collage artist. From her website we learn “I’m inspired by vintage globes and maps. … They are my canvases. I create and layer artwork on top of the vintage canvas in a seamless and natural way.” She is perhaps best known for the production of night-black globes and maps overlaid with a collage of brightly coloured flowers, floral ephemera and butterflies. This design can be found on a range of jigsaw puzzles, notecards, journals, sticky notes, shopping bags, and playing cards. See the box►

While the individual cards in this double pack, published by Galison, New York do not feature the actual map they do display the detailed and richly coloured flowers (on the aces and court cards) and butterflies (on the pip cards) that appear on her larger collages. An indication of the map can be seen on the tuck boxes, and the drawer style “keepsake” box. For an example of the full wall map see here►

Map of the world in full bloom playing cards created by Wendy Gold, published by Galison, New York, 2017

Above: Map of the world in full bloom playing cards created by Wendy Gold, published by Galison, New York, 2017.

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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.