La nuova tradizione italiana delle carte di Riccardo Baldani

Decks of playing cards are perhaps among the most common items to be found in homes throughout Italy. Each region of our country has its own, different in graphics but identical in structure, which together form a cultural heritage in its own right made of games that have their traditional setting on Christmas and New Year holidays. The Roman arista Riccardo Baldani has thought of an update of tradition in creating Baldani le Contemporanee, a deck of limited edition handmade playing cards that want to celebrate and overwrite the most famous regional models of Rome, the Neapolitan and Piacenza decks, with a new model inspired by the classic vintage cards proposing a new model – right in Rome, as the artist says, «the last attempt at a popularly recognized regional deck dates back to just before 1600».

Credits: Sara Galletta

The new Baldani le Contemporanee cards, which in mentioning the artist's name follow the tradition of Italian brands of classic playing cards such as Modiano, Dal Negro and Masenghini, are based on the minimalist design of traditional Piacenza cards – yet in form, packaging and above all in intentions the artist's project is placed in the desire to update the Italian tradition by creating a new classic. The most interesting aspect of the Italian regional maps, in fact, lies in the fact that the different versions do not compromise «the readability and playability of each deck. An Emilian can play briscola with his regional cards, as well as with the Neapolitans: like a conversation in Italian characterized and seasoned with dialects». Just as the iconic classic decks represent a mainstay of Italian pop culture of the last hundred years, these too want to be timeless and offer a new point of view on what Made in Italy is today through craftsmanship and above all a very limited circulation of only 50 copies.