Hawaiian playing cards
Hawaiian playing cards in the style of classic Hawaiian wood carvings, USA, 2015.
This pack was published via Kickstarter in 2015 through the collaborative effort of the Home Run Artists of Hawaii, and was designed to capture the days of Hawaiian royalty before Captain James Cook arrived on the shores of Kauai in 1778. The cards were printed by the United States Playing Card Company. See the box►
These playing cards were carefully researched by Scott Mijares (designer) and drawn by Scott Westmoreland, a retired Disney illustrator, and are in the art style of classic Hawaiian wood carvings. The court cards feature Hawaiian royalty, chieftains and historical warriors from the past. Kamehameha I, the first king to unite the Hawaiian Islands, is portrayed on the ace of spades and the card backs.
The pack is completed by a pair of diptych jokers portraying the seal or emblem of the State of Hawaii with the phrase “Ua Mau ke Ea o ka ʻĀina i ka Pono” -- most commonly translated as "the life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness". A separate joker depicting Menehune (a mythological race of dwarf people in Hawaiian tradition) is also included.
Above: Hawaiian playing cards published through the collaborative effort of the Home Run Artists of Hawaii, USA, and printed by the United States Playing Card Company, 2015.
Three versions of this pack were published: a standard edition with normal tuck box; a limited edition of 1,000 packs, in a long-tongue tuck box, with a real stamp seal, and wrapped in a lava lava sleeve; and a Bicycle edition (limited to 2,000 copies). The pack shown here is no. 59 of the limited edition of 1,000.
NOTE: Lava lava, is an article of daily clothing traditionally worn by Polynesians and other Oceanic peoples. It consists of a single rectangular cloth worn similarly to a wraparound skirt or kilt.
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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