artesano.cards

HECHO A MANO · SMALL BATCH · NUMBERED

A craftsman's workbench with hand-painted playing cards, brushes and gold leaf

Fifty-four cards. One pair of hands.

Artesano Cards makes playing cards the slow way: faces illustrated in ink and gouache, backs pressed on a letterpress older than your grandfather's grudges, edges gilded one deck at a time. Every box is numbered because every box is different.

Commission a deck

The workshop bench:

paso uno

Drawn

Each court card begins as a pencil sketch. Our queens have opinions; our jacks have alibis. The aces take the longest — emptiness is hard.

paso dos

Pressed

Backs are letterpressed in two passes on cotton stock — terracotta, then olive. You can feel the bite of the plate under your thumb.

paso tres

Gilded & numbered

Edges gilded, deck numbered, box sealed with wax. If a card isn't right, it doesn't ship — the woodstove eats well here.