 | |
| Industry | publisher ofbooks,playing cards,games, andtarot cards |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1968 (1968) |
| Founder | Stuart R. Kaplan |
| Headquarters | , |
| Website | https://www.usgamesinc.com/ |
U.S. Games Systems, Inc. (USGS) is a publisher ofplaying cards,tarot cards, and games located inStamford, Connecticut.[1][2] Founded in 1968 by Stuart R. Kaplan, it has published hundreds of different card sets,[2] and about 20 new titles are released annually. The company's product line includes children's card games, museum products, educational cards, motivational cards,tarot cards, andfortune telling decks. These are marketed through a network of retailers, including bookstores, museum gift shops, metaphysical shops, greeting card stores; toy and game stores; hobby shops, and mail order catalogs.[3]
The company started as a U.S. distributor of European tarot decks such as theSwiss 1JJ Tarot. The tarot decks sold well in bookstores and Kaplan decided to begin publishing tarot decks himself. In 1971, the company acquired the rights to publish theRider-Waite Tarot deck. The deck was extremely popular and served as the basis for the company's early success.[4]
Other tarot sets published by U.S. Games include a traditionalTarot of Marseilles, twoVisconti-Sforza tarot decks, anOswald Wirth tarot, and theThoth Tarot designed byAleister Crowley and drawn byLady Frieda Harris. The company is also known for its commitment to novel interpretations of the tarot, featuring new artwork in a variety of styles and formats. Some of the best known of these are thehippie-influenced Aquarian tarot, the borderless Morgan-Greer tarot, the circularMotherpeace tarot, and the Tarot of the Witches by Fergus Hall, which was featured in theJames Bond movieLive and Let Die.
Popular playing card games published by U.S. Games include the Wizard Card Game,Authors, the Natural World Series,American Revolution andAmerican Civil War Games, the Creative Whack Pack, Mystery Rummy, and Continuo.[3] Some of the company's card decks make use of museum holdings of artwork, like the Mummy Deck, from the holdings of theMuseum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the Women in Works of Art deck, drawn from theNational Portrait Gallery in Washington.[1]
In the 1970s, the company branched out into publishing books about the history of tarot. Stuart Kaplan co-wrote with Jean Huets the four-volumeEncyclopedia of Tarot, which was published over the course of two decades.[5] In 2009, U.S. Games published a commemorative Rider-Waite box set including Pamela Colman Smith's tarot cards, a selection of her art prints, and a short book about her, written by Kaplan.[6] Kaplan's interest in Pamela Colman Smith's work as a theatrical set designer and costumer, her involvement with theHermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and her collaboration with the noted occultistArthur Edward Waite on the Rider-Waite deck, led him to research and co-write the biographyPamela Colman Smith: The Untold Story with Mary Katherine Greer, Elizabeth Foley O'Connor, and Melinda Boyd Parsons.[7]
The company's logo is a silhouette ofThe Fool tarot card, taken from the drawing byPamela Colman Smith for the Rider-Waite Tarot.[8]
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)Pamela's Fool card, with the Fool poised at the edge of a cliff, was adopted as the USGS logo, both because the founding of the company required a leap of faith and because April 1st is the birthday of its founder, Stuart Kaplan.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)