Kickstarter · October 2026
Fifty-four
fragments of
Armenia
A fully custom playing card deck, drawn by hand over three years and printed by the United States Playing Card Company.
What you get
The deck
Every card carries one piece: the interlace of a khachkar, a pomegranate split open, a letter from Mesrop’s alphabet, a shape lifted from a manuscript in the Matenadaran. Shuffled, they scatter. Laid out, they hold together.
Fifty-four illustrations, no motif reused, no clip art, no stock suits. Playable as an ordinary deck and legible as an ordinary deck — the pips and courts read at a glance across a table.
- Composition
- 54 cards52 fully custom faces, two jokers, custom ace of spades
- Printer
- USPCCUnited States Playing Card Company, Erlanger, Kentucky
- Stock & finish
- Bicycle stockAir-cushion finish, traditional cut
- Tuck box
- Custom, Pantone-matchedEmbossed, foil detail, matched to the deck’s inks
- First printing
- 2,500 decksNumbered edition; not reprinted in this colourway
- Kickstarter price
- $22 per deck$18 early bird, held for people on the list below
- Campaign
- October 202630 days, funded or nothing charged
- Estimated delivery
- March 2027Ships worldwide from the United States
Drawn, not generated
The artwork
Masha Keryan drew all fifty-four by hand. Each court began as a pencil study, went through ink, and was colour-separated for press so the reds hold across the full run. Where a motif comes from a specific object — a stone, a carpet, a manuscript page — the card notes it.
Two people, three years
The makers
Illustration
Masha Keryan
Illustrator working in ink and gouache, with a long interest in Armenian manuscript painting and the ornament of carved stone. Drew every card in the deck.
Direction & production
Davit Torosyan
Born in Armenia, left at thirteen. Fragments started as a way to keep a whole culture in an object small enough to carry, and turned into three years of drawing, proofing and ink-matching with the printer.
Մրագմանյ — fragments.
Two ways in
Reserve a deck
For one or two decks
Join the list
You’ll get the artwork before anyone else, one email a month at most, and the $18 early-bird price held on launch day. No charge now.
For shops & organisations
Reserve wholesale units
Tell me roughly how many you’d take and I’ll send the wholesale terms and a one-page letter of intent. Non-binding, no payment due, and it helps me size the print run correctly.