What is Hidden Leaves?
By Mahdi Gilbert
“Playing cards are mystical, ritualistic, ancient, and mysterious.” - Rene Lavand
I remember my first deck of cards. I was a teenager learning magic and I hid the cards under my pillow. As the sun set and I was left in the quiet darkness of the night I would discover the magic of playing cards. Sitting up all night I would try to familiarize myself with this complex and layered tool of astonishment. I had never played cards growing up so everything was new to me. Four suits, thirteen different values, ten spot cards per suit, three court cards, 26 red cards and 26 black cards to make a total of 52 cards plus a Joker. (It’s funny to me, at first I did not even know the names of the black suits and I never thought I would ever be able to remember the words: Spades and Clubs.) I was overloaded with information and thought my brain would explode! But even then there was something very thrilling knowing that despite my ineptitude that I was being initiated into a secret and ancient practice of deciphering and manipulating these mystical wells of mystery by the playing cards themselves.
That first deck was a blue deck of Fan Back Tally-Ho’s and at first I found the design too geometric and distasteful but as I used it more and more I would get sucked into the hypnotic design for hours. Throughout the years as I developed in skill, the deck opened it’s secrets to me. I slowly would recognize shapes, objects, and patterns, where they would stop and begin again and where they would be repeated and completed at scale.
All this serves as the foundation and inspiration for Hidden Leaves. I wanted to design a deck that was mysterious and filled with secrets, secrets that had to be earned through time, practice, and study. The name of the deck itself eludes to this. Throughout history a sheet a paper was referred to as a leaf of paper. When combined with the unseen nature of the card worker’s art I thought it would appropriate to name my deck Hidden Leaves, a deck of playing cards,
Embracing The Rainbow,
Painted Strokes
Drawn from & Bringing color
to Life, Lies, & Love.
The design of Hidden Leaves started in back when I was in university studying film. We were studying French film and I discovered Jean-Pierre Melville’s masterpiece, Le Samouraï. It was a powerful experience watching that film. There’s almost no dialogue but every scene is charged with emotion. I was tremendously moved by that experience and wanted to recreate that with a deck of playing cards.
I wanted people to hold a piece of art in their hands that told a story with each moment and at every pause. I wanted people to behold a wonder, playing cards painted by a sleight of hand magician born without hands. I wanted people to be overwhelmed by the impossibility and the beauty of what they held, an awesome triumph over this world.
I used to draw a lot when I was growing up, it was one of my favorite hobbies. As I grew older drawing became more and more stressful for me as it became harder and harder to put on paper what I had in my heart and mind so at 17 years old I traded in my pencil for a deck of cards and took up sleight of hand in it’s place. At first, I really didn’t want to design and draw this deck of cards, it had been ten years since I picked up a pencil to draw so I looked for an artist. Unfortunately, every single artist I found that I could approve of was just too expensive for me to hire. I knew that if I wanted to get this done that I would have to buckle up, pick up my pen again and get to work. I spent months studying classic playing card artwork; identifying what aligned with my tastes and what didn’t, how to draw those classic cartoony faces, how to create patterns, how to import my artwork into Adobe Illustrator and turn scans into vector files.
I must have redesigned the whole deck three times and each card at least four times, each time playing with size, balance, shape, and color. Each of the court cards took about 16 hours on average to illustrate, the back design took about 48 hours, the Joker about 6 hours and 40 minutes, the ad cards about 5 hours, and the Ace of Spades about 12 hours. I have been designing this deck since January, it is now the end of August as I write this and I’m very close to being finished. I’ve spent months working on this project in pure agony, frustration, bliss, and joy. I can see the castle on the hill from where I’m standing, it won’t be much further now...
The face cards are inspired by the old school Goodall playing cards from the U.K. In my quest to find the most beautiful cards, they absolutely stood out as they were in the style that modern card players use and are strikingly simple and beautiful. To save money, some of the Goodall designs were only printed in black and red which forced the designers to severely restrict the lines they made and how they separated in the artwork which left strong contrast and powerful imagery if done well. Another thing they use to do was press the colors in one at a time into the cards and because of this every single card was unique as the ink would bleed differently on each and every card leaving slight imperfections. These imperfections reminded me of the Japanese aesthetic which is imperfect and asymmetrical by design and I wanted to incorporate that into my design. A hugely noticeable feature of Hidden Leaves is the conspicuous lack of index. This allows the borders of the court cards to extend much larger than usual so you can see more detail of the artwork.
All the spot cards are one directional and also feature a lack of indexes. The lack of indexes on the faces allows you to do many, many techniques and routines as they were performed in Hofzinser’s Salon of Wonder. I have been working on many techniques and routines (Ambitious Card, Everywhere & Nowhere, Transpositions, and many more!) that specifically take advantage of playing cards without indexes and I cannot wait to share them with you, they are incredible!
The Joker is one of the most important cards as it represents one of the most powerful figures in a deck of playing cards. In Hidden Leaves the Devil himself plays the fool. Innocuous to a deliberate fault. The credo of the pure fool in the words of James Joyce, "...I am not afraid to make a mistake, even a grave mistake, a lifelong mistake and perhaps as long as eternity too."
Traditionally, a deck of playing cards features one Joker. Following the iconic traditions of Carter, Thurston, and Kellar I wanted to feature the motif of a devil in my artwork. The Joker is often depicted as a court jester, which I always thought of as a nefarious character; slithering in the background seemingly harmless whilst masterfully and nefariously manipulating the outcome of every event. My original idea was to try to match the same style as the court cards for my joker. You can see these attempts in my original sketches.
Unfortunately I only understood the balance of the court cards as I was trying to design this Joker. I learned that there is a reason and placement for everything each courtly character is holding and that their corresponding pip is necessary to fill in empty space beside their heads. I did not have an identifying pip for the Joker so every single attempt was met with imbalance and I did not want to invent a Joker pip or use one from another deck (a star for instance) so I took a step back to clear my mind. I started to do research on Jokers and stumbled upon the Diavolo deck which features a strikingly bright (only) red Joker.
I loved this so I set out to design my own. I knew I wanted my Joker to be in full red flowing robe looking nefarious so I studied every representation I could find from old magic and theatrical posters. At first I tried to only use white and red in my design like the Diavolo deck but I found that it was almost impossible for me to get the right look for the face and hands so I opted to add black as well to really define some of the lines, leaving with the Joker you see in the deck now. I wanted to keep a border around the Joker, just like the court cards but I decided to cage this Devil in red. Like Johnny Cash, bound by wild desire, he fell into a ring of fire.
The Joker was such a strong and powerful choice for me and such an overwhelming sinister influence on my deck that I wanted to counterbalance it with an equally powerful symbol of light and innocence. But how was I to do this? Was I to create two distinct Jokers, one of light and one of darkness? And what would happen to my idea of only having a single Joker? As you could see I was distraught. Then it hit me. I would use the Ace of Spades, the most important and powerful card in the deck to contrast the Joker. But how?
I chose to feature a poor, peasant girl, on her knees praying as the most powerful and important card in the deck. To show true strength in the weak as greater than pride in the worldly, life as stronger than pain, and love as stronger than death.
One of the main motif’s of the deck is my hand holding a Royal Flush in Hearts which perfectly encapsulates the spirit of Hidden Leaves, which is: Play The Hand Life Dealt You! This comes from the attitude I grew up with, a life where you have have to make the most of what you have and transform liabilities into assets. I drew a lot of inspiration from the cover of the 1866 treatise on card games called, “The American Card Player” which features a lone hand holding a Royal Flush, spreading the cards in victory. I wanted to duplicate this but with my arms so I took photographs of myself holding fans of cards in every single position I could think of. None of them were symmetrical since I spread cards using both my arms at the same time and the aesthetic wasn’t what I had in mind. I was so frustrated and about to go back to the drawing board with a whole new design when I tried using just my right arm instead of both arms. The result is what you see. Since I can’t hold a fan of cards vertically with one arm, the image is impossible in the real world but rather captures the poetic ideal and it worked out brilliantly.
Enveloping the hands of victory are a pattern of branches in the center of the back design. These are directly inspired by the branches on the back of the legendary Tally-Ho fan back design. I redesigned them to fit with my visual style and placed them in the center of my design as roots to symbolically say that every tree needs strong roots. Which brings me back to the arm holding a fan of cards. I designed it in the shape of a tree to say, these are the hidden leaves that blossom to life when nourished.
Without doubt the hardest part of the whole back design was the outer layer of leaves, fruits and vines. I studied pattern making when I was a teenager and wanted to create a pattern that was dense and impenetrable. I wanted a wild bloom that concealed a vulnerable and majestic core. It also had to be 100% symmetrical which was a monumental task as any miscalculation meant that I would have to start from the beginning. The resulting pattern is true to the spirit of Hidden Leaves, which only strives to show the elegance and conceal all the sweat, toil, and tears. There is so, so many references in this back design to classic playing cards of old as well as many secrets hidden within those leaves. I really hope you have as good as a time exploring it as I did designing it.
The feel of a deck is very important and my favorite deck of cards in terms of touch are the Erdnase 216’s released by the Conjuring Arts Research Center. I wanted to duplicate that thin stock and smooth finish so I decided to work with USPCC to create a thin and flexible stock with a smooth finish, just like they use to print cards over a hundred years ago in America.
I really do hope you enjoyed this extended preview of one of the most important projects of my life and I also hope that fall in love with the design like I have. I took many bold and controversial moves designing (and hopefully soon printing) this deck and it will soon be time to send my baby off into the world. I’m reminded by that beautiful quote by Rene Lavand, “A deck of cards is like a fragile bird, if I squeeze it too hard, I will kill it, and if I let it go, it will fly away.”
And like a tender bird I’ve placed all my hope and dreams into these pieces of colored paper and I hope they not only are able to soar above the heavens but also carry me as well.
Hidden Leaves by Mahdi The Magician are available in our online store.
