The Waite–Smith Deck
Death
Ending and passage, drawn as a dawn between towers.
- Work
- from the 1909 Waite–Smith deck
- Plate
- Major Arcana · Key 13
- Maker
- Pamela Colman Smith, for A. E. Waite
- Date
- 1909
- Source
- Published London, 1909 · scan: Wikimedia Commons
Format
The full-resolution scan, color-managed to the source plate — yours to print, study, and explore.
Size
$29.00
The story
A skeletal rider in black armour advances on a white horse, a black banner of the white rose above him, a bishop and a child in his path. Pamela Colman Smith drew him in 1909 as the card of ending and passage — transformation, not the literal grave. Behind, the sun rises between two towers. Smith gave the scene its procession and its dawn working quickly for a flat fee, and the deck was credited to others for a century. Look for the rising sun, the fallen king, and the 'PCS' monogram low in the corner. This house prints her name.
See it on your wall
The plate, in your home
Death printed large and framed, hung in rooms like yours. Every edition ships ready to become the piece the room is built around.
About this reproduction
- A faithful reproduction of a public-domain plate — from the 1909 Waite–Smith deck (1909), held by Published London, 1909 · scan: Wikimedia Commons. The work was published before 1931 and is centuries out of copyright.
- Printed to order on 200gsm EMA matte art paper; framed pieces sit behind acrylic, no mat.
- Color-managed to the source scan; we correct nothing and invent nothing.
- Ships in 5–10 business days, rolled in a heavy-wall tube (framed pieces ship flat-packed).
- If it arrives less than perfect, we reprint or refund — your choice.
Why our plates cost more than a poster: we print from the highest-resolution scans available, at sizes where the engraving itself becomes visible — the emblem line, the letterpress bite, the registration of colour — on stock made to outlive its owner.
From the same hand
