Tinker Playing Cards
Produced for Ellusionist
Photography by Howard Budzynski
Tinker playing cards were produced for Ellusionist as part of a promotional contest in which the winner got the chance to work directly with me to create there own custom deck of cards + a gross of cards (144 decks) for their own use. For a lot of magicians having your own custom deck is the holy grail.
The winner was a devoted tinkerer and home inventor, creating most of his own props and magic effects for his shows from discarded mechanical and electrical junk. This spirit of invention was key to this design. I wanted to imbue it with this sense of utility and age, like an ornate 50's box of spark plugs that have been sat in your dad's home workshop for half a century.
All of the courts are custom and frozen in mid tinkering. The joker shows a Rube Goldberg style mechanism for shuffling cards, and the ace of spades for the literal spark of invention. Plus there's a sneaky Flux Capacitor hidden in there somewhere.
