Tarot Fellow
Smith-Waite Tarot Deck by Pamela Colman Smith — Centennial Borderless Edition
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The Smith-Waite Tarot Deck — the Centennial Edition celebrating Pamela Colman Smith’s groundbreaking original artwork, presented in a borderless format that lets the illustrations breathe on their own. This edition includes samples of Smith’s non-tarot artwork, honoring her broader legacy as an illustrator and artist. The foundational Rider-Waite-Smith imagery most tarot study is built on.
Description:Quick Specs
- Artist: Pamela Colman Smith (1909)
- Type: Tarot deck, 82 cards (78 standard + 4 Pixie art samples) with 16-page booklet
- Size: Card stack 4 3/4" x 2 3/4" x 1 1/8"
- Best for: Collectors, practitioners seeking original RWS fidelity, tarot history students
Pamela Colman Smith and the Revolution She Invented
In 1909, Pamela Colman Smith painted 78 watercolor illustrations for a tarot deck commissioned by Arthur Edward Waite and published by the Rider Company. What she created changed tarot permanently. Before Smith's deck, the pip cards of the minor arcana showed only repeated symbols arranged decoratively: seven cups, five wands, three swords. Smith painted scenes onto every one of them. The Five of Cups became a figure in a black cloak mourning over spilled vessels with two upright cups still standing behind. The Six of Swords became a ferryman carrying a woman and child across dark water. The Ten of Pentacles became a family scene with an elder, a couple, children, and dogs against a vine-hung gate. These narrative scenes gave every card a story, making intuitive reading possible for the first time at scale.
For most of the twentieth century, the deck bore the names "Rider-Waite" and Smith received no public credit. The "Smith-Waite" designation, formalized with the Centennial edition published by U.S. Games Systems in 2009 to mark the deck's hundredth anniversary, restores her authorship. The restoration matters not just as a historical correction but because the quality of her work deserves recognition on its own terms. Smith was a trained artist, a theater set designer, a publisher of her own literary magazine "The Green Sheaf," and a member of the Golden Dawn. Her visual choices encoded Waite's meanings while creating an independent visual poetry that readers across a century have found inexhaustible. Browse my tarot decks collection for other foundational and contemporary decks.
What the Centennial Edition Preserves
The Smith-Waite Centennial Tarot reproduces Smith's original watercolor palette in the muted, earthy tones she actually chose, as distinct from the brighter colorization introduced in later Rider-Waite printings. Smith's original color choices were restrained: dusty blues, ochres, soft greens, and warm neutrals that give the deck a cohesion and period-specific feeling that the brighter versions sacrifice for accessibility. Readers who have worked with a standard Rider-Waite deck for years often find the Centennial's palette revelatory, subtle details in the imagery become more visible when the colors aren't competing for attention.
The 82-card deck includes the standard 78 tarot cards plus four samples of Smith's non-tarot artwork: "Much Ado About Nothing," "The Gates of Dreamland," "Christmas Carol," and "Once in a Dream." These bonus pieces document Smith as a working illustrator beyond tarot. A 16-page booklet is included. This edition is distinct from the Radiant Rider-Waite, which uses a different colorization by Virginijus Poshkus, and from the Radiant Rider tin format, which is a collectible gift format rather than a study or working deck.
How to Use the Smith-Waite Centennial Tarot Deck
Three ways to engage with the Smith-Waite Centennial Tarot's original art and restored authorship.
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Learn the Pips as Narrative Scenes
Study each numbered minor arcana card as a story: who is in the scene, what has just happened, and what comes next. Smith's narrative scenes make intuitive reading accessible in ways that undepicted pip cards cannot achieve for modern practitioners.
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Compare the Original Palette to Later Editions
If you've used a standard Rider-Waite, compare it card by card with the Centennial. Smith's muted palette reveals details lost in brighter colorizations. Her dusty blues, ochres, and neutrals guide the eye differently than high-contrast reprints.
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Explore the Bonus Pixie Artwork
The four included non-tarot cards document Smith as a working illustrator beyond tarot. Read about her theater work and The Green Sheaf magazine to understand the broader career of the woman who invented modern tarot's visual narrative language.
The Tarot Fellow Standard
I stock this edition because the authorship correction is long overdue and the original palette matters. If you've only ever worked with a bright Rider-Waite reprint, the Centennial will show you a different deck, quieter, more coherent, and closer to what Smith actually made in 1909. It's the right choice for collectors who want the source text, for students who want to understand why the RWS became the default, and for readers who find the standard editions too garish for meditative work. Explore my tarot books collection for study resources that illuminate Smith's symbolism and the history of the Rider-Waite-Smith tradition.
Frequently Asked Questions
The Smith-Waite Centennial reproduces Smith's original 1909 watercolor illustrations in her muted palette, restoring her name alongside Waite's. It includes 78 tarot cards, four samples of Smith's non-tarot artwork, and a 16-page booklet.
The Smith-Waite Centennial uses Smith's original muted palette: dusty blues and ochres. The Radiant Rider-Waite uses Poshkus's brighter colorization. Both use Smith's 1909 illustrations but produce meaningfully different reading experiences.
Smith was commissioned as an illustrator and paid a flat fee with no royalties. The deck published under the Rider Company's and Waite's names, her contribution uncredited for most of the 20th century despite inventing the illustrated minor arcana.
The Smith-Waite Centennial adds four non-tarot works beyond the 78 cards: Much Ado About Nothing, The Gates of Dreamland, Christmas Carol, and Once in a Dream, documenting Smith's career as illustrator and literary magazine publisher.
