TELIAD Playing Cards. The “Passione” for Fantasy World inspired by Tolkien

Passione Playing Cards is synonymous with refined work and beautiful design. Born as a project with Italian artists, their decks have shown a major effort to excel in this increasingly complex world of playing cards.

 

TeliadHeren_aces

 

A few months ago I showed you some exclusive pictures of the upcoming release of Passione: TELIAD. I have had the opportunity to talk to Riccardo Conturbia and he told me some details about the production of this new deck that will be soon on Kickstarter. This is what he told me:

Teliad is a complex project that begun 1 year ago, from the mind and the hand of Federico Bollo, a freelance artist and a great fan of Tolkien’s fantasy world of which he knows even the most hidden details.

The original idea, that we discussed when we first met, was to create a deck of playing cards with on a fantasy world, with the four main races (humans, elves, orcs, and dwarves), each one with distinctive traits and styles.

While we were working, together with Federico and Maurizio Toccafondi (Passione Playing Cards’ art director), we decided that the Teliad universe could benefit from a wider range of options. One “earthly” version, based on the “real life” fantasy world, one “evil” deck and one “heavenly” deck

That’s why we have Teliad Heren (fortune, fate, in Sindarin – the fictitious language invented by Tolkien), Teliad dùr (obscure, dark) and Teliad Alfrin (immortal).

 

TeliadHeren_aces

Now my job is to make a Kickstarter campaign (February 29 it will be live) to bring Teliad to life and I have some aces up my sleeve. First Passione Playing Cards always wants to innovate. It’s not easy and it could bring some risks into the project that’s why we need to be careful when introducing changes.

We are working to bring new materials and innovative printing techniques, but before we need to be sure it will work and that we are able to provide the best quality with reliability.  We will work together with LPCC, as for the previous project, Love is a Smoke and they fully understand and share our vision and approach.

Italy means also design and craftsmanship, we gained a lot of experience with the Love is a Smoke campaign, for sure we will aim to more doable things, but it’s something we want to do. It’s important to find the right balance between unique objects and their price, not to mention the issue of shipping things back and forth from another country.

I can’t reveal everything now, but we are working on a dragon statue, together with an Italian artist, that will work as a “deck holder” (you can imagine a dragon guarding a treasure – the deck  :D )

Here are some images of what will be Teliad Heren and Teliad Dur. Teliad Afrin will be shown soon. Definitely a great success this year we will wait impatiently.

 

TeliadHeren_tuck

 

 

TeliadDur_tuck

 

I will be aware of the deck release so you can get yours. Meanwhile, you can visit Passione website or be in touch with the project news in Passione in Facebook.