天空の城 Playing Cards

A limited edition series of illustrated, fully-custom, whimsical anthropomorphic art playing cards inspired by medieval England and Edo Japan.

Inspired by William Morris textile patterning and portraiture in Renaissance and Baroque Europe, the world of Coney rabbits is expanding. The different courts represent different houses within the warren, working together in symphony to reach for the sky and lift their castle up.

The fully-custom pip cards have an innovative design to create an interactive, interconnected puzzle. Each card is a piece in a larger image, and only when laid in the correct order and position, the indices disappear and reveal the full image otherwise hidden on the canvas.

天空の城(Tenku no Shiro, meaning the Castle in the Sky in Japanese) is the Nenya cats story version. It takes its name from Studio Ghibli's Laputa, which in turn was inspired by Gulliver's Travels.

The courts were drawn over ten years, in large portrait illustrations inspired by Japanese ukiyoe woodblock prints, depicting the whimsical world of my 'Nenya' cats. The pip cards this time reveal a Japanese-inspired castle hoisting its sails and koinobori flying fish flags.

SIZE POKER
MATERIAL CARD STOCK
ORIGIN CHINA

JACK BRUTUS PENNY

An English teacher, writer and illustrator based in Japan with a degree in Psychology. In his own words he "writes and illustrates nonsense". Inspired by a wide variety of work from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to Bruegel’s series of allegories.