A woman in a red dress stands before a castle. She holds a wand, but her gaze is elsewhere. That image, the Six of Wands, is one of seventy-eight that Pamela Colman Smith drew in 1909. The Pamela Colman Smith Commemorative Set is a special edition of the Rider-Waite-Smith tarot deck that reproduces those original drawings in their exact color palette and card stock, before decades of alteration by mass-market printing. It includes a hardcover guidebook and archival prints, released in 2021 by U.S. Games Systems to honor the artist who created the world’s most recognizable tarot images.
The Deck That Nearly Vanished
Every tarot reader knows the images. Few know the name. Pamela Colman Smith (1878–1951) was a Jamaican-born British artist, a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and a friend of W.B. Yeats and Bram Stoker. In 1909, Arthur Edward Waite commissioned her to illustrate his esoteric tarot system. She produced seventy-eight full-color paintings in six months, working in a style shaped by theater design, folklore, and her own clairvoyant flashes.
The deck debuted that same year under the imprint of William Rider & Son. Smith received a flat fee of ten pounds and no royalties. She never earned more from what became the most influential tarot deck in the English-speaking world. She died in poverty in London, and the original paintings were lost or destroyed. What survived were the printed cards.
But those cards changed over time. Successive print runs shifted the colors. The muted greens turned garish. The rusty reds became orange. The deep blues flattened into generic navy. By the 1970s, what readers called the Rider-Waite-Smith deck was often a third-generation copy of a faded original, with Smith’s subtle storytelling buried beneath commercial corrections.
The commemorative set exists to undo that drift. It uses digital restoration of the earliest surviving 1909 printing to recover the palette Smith actually painted. It is not a reinterpretation. It is a retrieval.
The set comes as a boxed collection. Inside you find a deck of seventy-eight cards printed on matte stock that mimics the texture of the original. The card backs use the blue-and-white tile pattern Smith designed, which is sometimes called “the Waite pattern” but was hers. A hardcover guidebook by Stuart R. Kaplan and other historians documents Smith’s life and the deck’s creation. There is also a separate print of her famous self-portrait, the Queen of Wands, in its restored colors.
This is not a collector’s novelty. The cards are fully readable. We have used this set in our own work. The difference in handling is immediate. The matte surface does not slide as gloss cards do. The muted colors force the eye to attend to the linework and the expressions. You read the faces, not the brightness.
Why the Original 1909 Colors Matter
Why did the colors matter so much? Smith was a trained stage designer. She understood how color shaped mood. The original Ten of Wands had a grey-green sky that conveyed exhaustion, not a sunny blue. The Nine of Swords used a sickly yellow that made the dreamer’s distress visceral. Later decks brightened these to match commercial expectations, and the emotional weight shifted.
The commemorative set returns the cards to their intended emotional register. The Sun is no longer a flat yellow orb but a warm gold with visible brushstrokes. The High Priestess’s veil retains its subtle blue-grey rather than turning solid blue. These are not cosmetic details. In a reading, the difference alters the quality of the symbol.
We have found that readers who switch to the commemorative set report noticing details they had never seen. The landscapes in the Minor Arcana become active participants. The Six of Pentacles’ figure does not simply hand coins; his robe folds suggest a specific weight of fabric. The Eight of Cups’ moon reflects on water in a particular shade that matches the numerology of the number eight.
Some practitioners use the set exclusively for historical study, comparing it to modern decks to track how interpretation shifted. Others use it in ritual work that honors the Golden Dawn lineage. Because the set includes the original imagery without later glosses, it can serve as a primary source for scholars of the tarot.
How It Compares to Other Rider-Waite-Smith Editions
The Rider-Waite-Smith deck has been reprinted dozens of times. The Centennial Edition (2009) used a color correction based on a later printing. The Universal Waite (1990) recolored the images in pastel tones. The Radiant Rider-Waite (2003) brightened them further. Each changed the meaning through color.
The commemorative set is the only mass-produced edition that deliberately returns to the 1909 first edition palette. It also includes the original card order which differs from some later editions. The Death card shows a skeleton in armor, not the often-reproduced version with a white skull.
One common comparison is the Pamela Colman Smith Tribute Deck created by other artists in her style. That is homage. This set is restoration.
Common Misconceptions About Smith and the Set
The most persistent mistake is that Smith was merely a technical draftsman who followed Waite’s instructions exactly. Documentation from the era shows she had substantial autonomy. Waite provided a general schema for the Major Arcana but the Minor Arcana’s narrative scenes were largely her creation. She decided that the Two of Cups would show a couple exchanging cups, not a single cup. She chose the positions, the gests, the colors.
Another misconception is that the commemorative set is a reprint of the same deck you can buy for fifteen dollars. It is not. The card stock is heavier. The color restoration is not a filter but a careful match to the earliest surviving copy. The guidebook contains essays and archival photographs not in any standard edition.
Some assume the set is only for collectors and should not be used. We disagree. The cards are printed on standard tarot card stock and handle well for regular reading. They are not fragile. Use them.
FAQ
Is the commemorative set the same as the original 1909 deck? Very close. It uses digital restoration of the 1909 printing, but some details have been clarified for readability. The overall palette and linework match the original far more than any other current edition.
Why was Pamela Colman Smith overlooked for so long? She was a woman and a person of color in a field dominated by men, and she died before the deck achieved its global popularity. Her contract gave her no royalties and no credit on the box for most of the twentieth century.
Does the set include the LWB (Little White Book) that come with standard decks? No. It includes a full-color hardcover guidebook with historical context, biographical information, and interpretive notes.
Can I buy just the deck without the box and book? As of this writing, U.S. Games Systems does not sell the deck separately from the set. Some stores may offer the deck alone if they remove it from the set, but that is uncommon.
Should You Buy the Commemorative Set?
The Pamela Colman Smith Commemorative Set is not a luxury product. It is a correction of the historical record. For anyone who works with the Rider-Waite-Smith system understanding what Smith actually painted matters. The colors she chose were not arbitrary. They were visual instructions. This set restores those instructions.
We keep one on the shelf beside our study copies of the Golden Dawn manuscripts and the Book of Thoth. When we want to see what the cards said before the printers got to them we open this box.
For further reading, explore our guide to the Rider-Waite-Smith history and symbolism. Learn more about tarot as an oracle system and the role of artists in the esoteric tradition. Our glossary of tarot terms defines the card meanings you will encounter in the set.