The Fountain

The record

There have been many attempts to distill the Tarot images to their essential cores, but often these end up being no more than an oversimplification - The Fool as a man walking, Temperance as a woman pouring liquid between two cups, and so on. The Fountain Tarot follows this trend, but manages to carry it out successfully. The creators studied many different decks from different periods before the artist, Jonathan Saiz, made the full-size oil paintings which later became the cards in this deck. The images have a depth that belies their apparent simplicity through a color palette that manages to be both intense and diaphanous at the same time. The deck's atmosphere evokes the sense of mystery that Pamela Colman Smith achieved in the original Rider-Waite deck while avoiding New-Age kitsch. Originally a Kickstarter project, the deck is of top quality, with the unusual touch of silvered edges, an unexpected change from the more common gold edging, and is packed in a hard cardboard box with a magnetic closure, designed by Andi Todaro. Ms. Todaro also created the deck's very attractive back; as the deck's website mentions, the backs of many decks often seem like an afterthought. The back

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