Tamarind Institute stacked deck
Tamarind Institute stacked deck, USA, 2003
The Tamarind Institute is a centre dedicated to the preservation of fine art lithography through research, educational programmes, international exchanges and creative collaboration. Founded in Los Angeles in 1960, but moved to Albuquerque to become a part of the University of New Mexico in 1970. This pack was created in 2003 to support the production of an online catalogue of the Institute’s collections. Each of the 52 playing cards and the two jokers present a creation by an individual artist or designer, and an extra card lists their names.


Above: Tamarind Institute stacked deck by multiple artists, USA, 2003.

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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