The Waite–Smith Deck
The Emperor
Settled authority, in bare rock and rule.
- Work
- from the 1909 Waite–Smith deck
- Plate
- Major Arcana · Key 4
- 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
He sits on a stone throne set with rams' heads, an ankh sceptre in his hand, red mountains rising behind him. Pamela Colman Smith drew him in 1909 as settled authority — the ordered counterpart to the Empress's garden. Where her card teems with growing things, his is bare rock and rule. Smith gave all seventy-eight images their staging and gesture in a matter of months, working for a flat fee, and history filed the deck under other names for the better part of a century. Her small 'PCS' monogram sits in the corner. This house prints her name on the plate.
See it on your wall
The plate, in your home
The Emperor 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
