№ I · MMXXVI · Inaugural Issue
Shipping the World Over from the Press
Set in IM Fell & EB Garamond
A working pack of playing-cards, drawn from Walter Crane's botanical compendium A Floral Fantasy in an Old English Garden, hand-numbered, struck upon cotton stock, and sent out from the Press in a paper-board box.
Acquire the Deck
Two cards from the Deck. The face cards each take their figure from one of Crane's plates with a line of his verse beside it; the number cards run in watercolour pips, no two alike. The Ace is the first plate of the book. One pip, much paper.
Rat Queen is a small press, lately convened in the quiet between centuries, given over to the revival of forgotten Victorian illustration through objects fit for the table. The Press takes the long, painted plates of Walter Crane, botanist, allegorist, garden-poet, and sets them, by way of careful reproduction, into things that may be shuffled, dealt, and held.
The first issue is the Floral Fantasy Deck: fifty-two playing cards drawn from Crane's A Floral Fantasy in an Old English Garden, the volume he published in 1899. Crane's figures keep their crowns; his knights ride out as they were drawn. We have not improved upon him; we have only made him portable.
A Floral Fantasy in an Old English Garden was Crane's late book. A procession of personified flowers in a garden where every weed wears heraldry. The Deck draws from twenty-four of its plates.
The face cards each carry one of Crane's plates and a line of his verse. The suit signs are set as small painted tiles: one tile for each Jack, two for the Queens, three for the Kings. The numbered cards run in plain watercolour pips. No two pips alike; each set down again, by hand, by water.
The first impression is hand-numbered to three hundred Decks, struck on cotton stock and finished by hand. When the impression is gone, the Press will set the plates aside and turn to the next book.
