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Welcome to Ecosse Quills, a deck of 54 playing cards celebrating 150 years of Scottish literary history. This deck is 100% custom, from the design of the pips themselves to the hand-drawn picture cards, jokers and the ace of spades.
Over the years Scotland has produced a plethora of excellent writers, storytellers and poets and we wanted to create a deck of cards to acknowledge and celebrate some of this talent.
We chose the name as Ecosse is French for Scotland and Quills were an early version of the pen, thus Ecosse Quills = Scottish Writers.
The Pips
The pips were designed using a compass and pencil and graph paper. By drawing circles on the graph paper, we were able to create the shapes for each of the pips, as indicated by the drawings below. These were then replicated in Illustrator and filled in to create our Clubs, Diamonds, Hearts and Spades. The red pips are deliberately a dark red as we prefer the aesthetic of this.
The Kings
These were the first people to be chosen to represent our picture cards. Initially, people like Sir Walter Scott and Robert Burns were thought of to represent two of our kings, but we struggled to find photographs of them and we found drawing from paintings harder to do than drawing from photographs. Also, in a traditional deck of cards, the kings all have beards, and once we had decided on Robert Louis Stevenson and Arthur Conan Doyle as two of the kings, it was obvious to us that the other kings should all be sporting ‘gentlemen’s moustaches’. Consequently choosing JM Barrie and Kenneth Graeme to represent our two remaining kings became obvious as they also wore dapper moustaches. You will also note that all these writers were in the late 19th century an early 20th century. They represent an older generation of the writer. We also have our king of hearts as a suicide king although he is stabbing his head with a feather rather than with a sword.
When we were researching our kings we spent some time reading through aphorisms associated with each picture card. When we discovered Robert Louis Stevenson said, “Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well” we knew that this needed to be included on his card. This meant that all our picture cards needed to have a saying associated with them. Where possible these have been sayings which might reference game playing, such as Conan Doyle’s, “The Game is afoot.”
The Jacks
The Jacks in our deck needed to represent a younger generation of a writer. Thus the four chosen are John Buchan, Iain M Banks, Alasdair Gray and Ivor Cutler. These were chosen primarily because we are fans of their work.
The Queens
When you think about the history of the British Monarchy it is the queens who have reigned longest and so this is reflected in the fact that all our queens are still alive at the time of printing. We did consider including people like Muriel Spark but decided against her on the basis that she had sadly passed. In our deck, the men are dead and the women alive. The queens are Ali Smith, Denise Mina, Jackie Kay and Val McDermid.
All our picture cards are holding feather rather than weapons or flowers, reflecting the theme of our deck.
The Ace of Spades
Originally we had planned to present the ace of spades surrounded by Scottish iconographies such as the rampant lion, the unicorn and the thistle but as the deck developed we realised that it should be our two hands holding quills drawing and writing the ace of spades.
The Jokers
The jokers again are representative of two of our hands in the act of drawing and writing. The red joker is drawing the 4 of hearts and the black joker is drawing the four of clubs. These could be used as reveals by magicians.
The Box
The front of the box is meant to be reminiscent of the Saltire, the Scottish flag, with its crossed white feathers on a blue background. The box also has a card reveal, the two of hearts, build into its top tabs. Down one side it reads Ecosse Quills Quality Playing Cards and down the other, it reads Ecosse Quills Cairtean Cluich Caileachd which means the same thing but in Gaelic.
The back and tartan
We have chosen a simple tartan design for our card back to further emphasise the Scottish theme of our deck. We have gone for a thin white border around our tartan back. The back is reversible.
All our picture cards are wearing a tartan jacket and these are coloured differently to match each suit. The three hearts are wearing red tartan, the diamonds orange tartan, the spades blue and the clubs green.
The Printers
We will be using MPC to print our playing cards.
Card Stock: Linen
Card Finishing: BETA Playing Card Finish
Packaging: Custom Tuck Box Smooth Aqueous Matte
List of number cards
Here is a selection of our playing cards
Greeting Cards
We will produce greeting cards of all the face cards.
Stretch Goals
- 55th Card insert – a half and half card of King of Clubs and Queen of Hearts at £5000. If this stretch goal is achieved then the shape of the box might change slightly to accommodate this 55th card.
- We will print a second Red Ecosse Quills Deck at £7500 which we will sell at £10.00
Note the different reveal on the tabs – this one is the two of spades.
Risks and challenges
This is our first project and therefore we have much to learn about running a campaign. However, we are confident that we can see this through. We are planning to post the decks out of ourselves rather than using a fulfilment company as we want to maximise our profits. There is a small risk there that if we are really successful that this will be somewhat overwhelming but we can take some holidays from our employers to ensure that you all get the decks you have bought.