Fantastic Menagerie Tarot

A bluebird dreams of her long lost love. A family of bees gather to enjoy bread and honey. Two cats, attired in evening-wear, dance on a rooftop below a full moon... The much-loved animal fantasy illustrations of Victorian artist J.J. Grandville take on new life in this glorious and uniquely beautiful tarot. The fully-illustrated, full-color 78-card deck features a magical cast of anthropomorphic figures. The deck follows the well-known Rider Waite Smith pattern, and is easy to read, evocative and witty. There is also a delightful companion book by Sophie Nussle, which includes keywords for beginners and detailed ideas and new spreads to stimulate more experienced readers. The book also features sample readings by Paula Goodman Wilder, singer with the San Francisco opera and well known in the tarot community for her melodramatic, irreverent but oh-so-accurate reading style.

All in all a tarot deck that's not only beautiful, but has its own wickedly funny flair.
 

Karen Mahony founded baba studio with Alex Ukolov in 2002. Their work has since appeared in numerous design magazines and New Age publications in the USA and Europe. She has also published many articles on both tarot and design, with a reputation as one of today's most accessible and enjoyable tarot writers. Irish by origin, she lives in Prague.

Alex Ukolov is an artist and designer specializing in traditional Russian styles and techniques. With two degrees in Art and Design he has also taught decorative miniature painting. Originally from the Crimea, he currently lives in Prague, where he runs baba studio with Karen Mahony.

Sophie Nussle is a former aid worker and has been gathering and carrying her stories and tarot cards from the UK and Switzerland to Congo, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Iraq, Ecuador, Israel, the United States - and many other countries, real and imagined. She is a lifelong lover of French 19th Century art and literature and grew up on Grandville illustrations of Les Fables de La Fontaine and Gulliver's Travels - which might have inspired her own life. She won the BBC World Service Award for Short Story of the Year in 2000 for Buried Bananas, a story about a Rwandan genocide survivor. She lives in Geneva and finds inspiration for story characters sitting in that multi-cultural city's many coffee shops.

Jean Ignace Isidore Gérard, alias Grandville, was born in France in 1803. At an early age, he began working as a magazine illustrator and theatrical costume designer. In 1829, at the tender age of 26, he became famous for his Métamorphoses du Jour, featuring caricatures of humans with animal heads. In 1838 he was asked to illustrate Swift's Gulliver, which became one of his most celebrated illustrated books. He died in an insane asylum in 1847, and is now regarded as a founding father of Surrealism.