Fantastic Menagerie

Karen Mahony and Alex Ukolov's Baba Studio, the Prague atelier behind the Tarot of Prague and the Baroque Bohemian Cats, built the Fantastic Menagerie from J. J. Grandville's nineteenth-century animal caricatures: the great French satirist's dressed beasts, bankers with beaks, society wolves, promenading storks, recomposed into a full tarot. The record's 1828 date belongs to the source art's era, not the deck; what Baba Studio did was give Grandville's social zoo the structure his satire always implied. Grandville drew animals to tell truths about humans, which is precisely tarot's method with symbols, so the marriage is unusually honest: every card is already a commentary. Baba Studio's production standards, sumptuous and exact, made their decks collector benchmarks. It suits satire lovers, admirers of nineteenth-century illustration, Baba Studio completists, and readers who like their arcana with wit and waistcoats. Readers wanting nature's animals rather than society's should visit the wildlife shelf; this menagerie dresses for dinner.