Damn! Fools by Moon
Damn! Fools playing cards designed by Leo Scherfig, 2022.
This the second of several packs designed by the graphic designer Leo Scherfig (born 1968), who lives in the village of Askeby on the island of Møn, Denmark. Published by Moon (essentially this is an anglicised pronunciation of Møn), this pack was printed by Legend’s, in an edition of 600 standard packs and a further 300 gilded and numbered ones. See the box
The designer describes this pack on his website as follows: “The art may not be for everybody. It is quite simple collage-graphics, almost brutalistic. People who like raw graphics, though, are going to love this — no doubt! In making the art for this deck I have of course been inspired by a lot of art and playing cards — especially the Rixdorfer deck of playing cards from 1968”.
The court cards are in the form of heavily drawn pen-and-ink cat figures, there are Rumsfeld-type quotes on the aces (e.g. “We don’t even know what we don’t know”), a single quote on the four of diamonds (“With knowledge come no more questions”), and the word “Møn” on the sixes of each suit. All cards, including the two jokers, have either a thick red or black border.
Above: ‘Damn! Fools’ playing cards designed by Leo Scherfig and published by Moon, Denmark, 2022.
By Peter Burnett
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.
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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