A house of Provenance · est. in the public domain
The pictures people used to think with.
Museum-grade reproductions of the esoteric tradition’s printed art — the 1909 Waite–Smith tarot, the alchemical emblem books, the figures of the sky and the hand. A print room, not a shop of fortunes: the plates supply the wonder; we supply the paper, the ink, and the record.
The shelves
Five collections, one midnight library
Each plate is centuries in the public domain, chosen for what it is as art and as history — never for what anyone once claimed it could do.
SHELF I · 1909The Waite–Smith Deck
The seventy-eight images Pamela Colman Smith drew in 1909 — the deck that redrew the tarot for the modern eye. The Majors, as single plates, each carrying her name.
The collection →
SHELF II · 16–17th c.The Alchemical Cabinet
The emblem books of the Great Work — Splendor Solis in its jewelled colour, and Michael Maier’s Atalanta Fugiens, the 1617 book that set alchemy to image and music alike.
The collection →
SHELF III · The FiguresThe Celestial Figures
Zodiacal men and horoscope diagrams — the astrological broadsides by which an older world read a person into the sky. (The star maps proper live next door, at The Firmament.)
The collection →
SHELF IV · A History of IdeasThe Reading Hand
Palmistry charts and phrenology heads — the pseudoscience wall, hung honestly as the history of ideas: what people once believed a hand or a skull could tell.
The collection →
SHELF V · EmblemataThe Emblem Shelf
Memento mori and hermetic emblems — the pictures people used to think with, curated with restraint: the hourglass, the ouroboros, the skull that meant remember.
The collection →The signature
Pamela Colman Smith drew all seventy-eight cards. History spent a century crediting everyone but her.
In 1909 she designed the deck that redrew the tarot for the modern eye — in a matter of months, for a flat fee, with her small “PCS” monogram tucked into each corner. This house calls the deck WAITE–SMITH throughout and prints her name on every plate.
Her life, her deck, her credit →
The Star — Pamela Colman Smith, for A. E. Waite
Cleared, not claimed
Every plate is a faithful reproduction of a work published before 1931 — the 1909 deck, Maier’s 1617 emblems, the 16th-century Splendor Solis. Provenance is recorded per piece; Wellcome-sourced plates carry their attribution line.
The print room register
We describe these images as art and as history. Nothing here predicts, heals, protects, or promises — no fortunes, no services. The plates were made to be looked at, and thought with.
Printed to outlast us
On 200gsm EMA matte art paper, at sizes where the engraved line and the letterpress colour become visible. Deep-zoom every plate before you choose it.
On the wall
The plate a room is built around
The same plate, hung in four very different homes — imagine yours among them.
