Giovanni Meroni's designs have long been popular with many collectors and club members.  He's got a unique and very modern signature style, very distinctive, and he often chooses motifs from mythology, common archetypes of good and evil and even contemporary culture.

From July last year to June this year, Meroni created three projects that stood out enough to bring him to the attention of the Diamond Awards Committee:
* Exquisite Fortuna - an experimental project with the Conjuring Arts Research Center/Expert PCC
* Modern Idols: Hope, Fear, Endless Hope & Extreme Fear Ed. - an ode to nihilism
* ORDER: Imperium, Revolutio & Electus Ed. - inspired by propaganda art and dystopian novels

Artist's homepage: https://www.thirdwayindustries.com/
Exquisite Fortuna: https://www.thirdwayindustries.com/product/exquisite-fortuna/
Modern Idols (Kickstarter): https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thirdwayind/modern-idols-playing-cards
ORDER (Kickstarter): https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thirdwayind/order-playing-cards

For PassioneTeam's inaugural nomination for the Playing Card Deck of the Year in the Diamond Awards, they created Vivaldi Playing Cards, "a project that brings the vibe, the allure, and the charm of the Venetian Baroque era in a Playing Cards project" according to its Kickstarter project page.  The metallic-print, two-tone back designs are complemented by soft court cards and faces that look like watercolors, all created by artist Sofia Bolognesi.  The deck was released in two back designs, Allegro (green/silver) and Large (red/gold), and these two decks were made available in a limited edition boxed set, the grey and copper Concerto box.

Kickstarter project: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/passione/vivaldi-playing-cards-printed-by-uspcc
Passione Playing Cards: https://www.passioneplayingcards.com
Artist Page at Artstation: https://www.artstation.com/sofiabolognesi

Alexander Chin, proprietor of Seasons Playing Cards, is no stranger to being nominated for a Diamond Award.  A 52+J member and a partner in the Portfolio52 website, Alex has been pushing the boundaries in playing card packaging and artwork from the beginning.

His sole production in the period from July 2019 to June 2020 was strong enough to get him a double nomination for Playing Card Deck and Artist of the Year.  The six-deck set of National Playing Card Collection Day 2019 premiered at the 52+J convention in Charlotte, North Carolina.  The design was inspired by a trip Alex took with his fianc?e to Morocco, capturing the local architecture and tile work in a spectacular manner, from the three-dimensional card backs with pseudo-Moroccan tile designs and the archway boxes that, when stacked front-to-back in a specific way, create an infinity mirror effect that looks as if you're staring down a long arched hallway.  (And that doesn't even touch on how beautiful the cards are!)  This is also the first design ever to be nominated for a Diamond Award from printer MakePlayingCards.com.  The six decks are available in two three-deck sets consisting of a Room box, an arch box and a gate box, and the cards are in patterns of zellij tile, standard club design and standard spade design.  (Hopefully, Alex will pop in and give a much-better explanation of all this!)

Artist website: https://www.seasonsplayingcards.com
National Playing Card Collection Day 2019 website: https://nationalcardcollectionday.com/donate

Chad Michael is a newcomer to the Diamond Awards, with Iron Spades, but he's no stranger to deck design, having created the NoMad deck for Theory11.  Iron Spades debuted on Kickstarter as a double project entitled "Iron Clays and Spades," pairing the custom playing cards with custom-designed "gaming counters," or what most people will better recognize as poker chips.  The cards, printed in collaboration with Art of Play (owned by Dan and Dave Buck) and Roxley Games of Canada, with gilded letterpress tuck boxes printed by Clove Street Press and cards manufactured by the United States Playing Card Company.  The print work on the faces of the Aces and extra cards is reminiscent of wood block prints but done with sharp detail, and the tuck boxes are like something out of the late 19th century United Kingdom.

Artist site: http://chadmichaelstudio.com
Artist page for project: http://chadmichaelstudio.com/portfolio/iron-clays-spades/
Kickstarter project: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/roxley/iron-clays-and-spades

This topic has been moved to The Conversation Parlor.

http://www.playingcardforum.com/index.php?topic=13154.0

This topic has been moved to The Conversation Parlor.

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This topic has been moved to Deck Reviews!.

http://www.playingcardforum.com/index.php?topic=12823.0

Hello, friends, forum readers and 52 Plus Joker members,

As we've done in the past, at the start of the voting period for the Diamond Awards, we have created a special board filled with topics covering each of the nominees for the Artist of the Year and Deck of the Year, with combined topics in those cases where one person has been nominated for work in both categories.

"What are the Diamond Awards?," you're asking?  That's a great questions - and it tells me you're probably not a member of 52 Plus Joker yet!  The Diamond Awards were initiated as the club's way of recognizing excellence in the world of playing cards.  There are three awards, so far.  One, the Dawson Award, is chosen by the club's Board of Directors - while it has been given out yearly, it is only presented when a worthy candidate can be found and is not automatically issued annually.  The other two, as you may have surmised here, are the Playing Card Artist of the Year and the Playing Card Deck of the Year.

While only 52 Plus Joker members can participate in the voting - special instructions are being emailed later today to all members - the entire forum is welcome to read the topics and provide comments on the works and the nominees.

If you have any questions about the Diamond Awards, please post them here and I'll do my best to answer them for you!

Monolith was created by Giovanni Meroni through his design studio, Thirdway Industries.  667 backers on Kickstarter raised over €50,000 to get this project off the ground and into their hands.  The project consists of three different deck designs: White and Black were part of the original launch of the Kickstarter project, while Gold was a special version of the Black deck, 500 decks with holographic gilding, packaged in a tuck box with serial-numbered seal and gold and red metallic foil with neon inks.

Thirdway Industries website
Kickstarter project page
Kardify article on deck achieving its funding goal in under an hour
Thirdway Industries Facebook page
The three decks at Portfolio52 - account required (free) for full access

In playing card collector circles, Jackson Robinson, the one-man show that is Kings Wild Project (KWP), is a man who really needs no introduction.  He's always been a highly prolific and talented playing card designer.  This year, remaining ever true to form, he released FORTY-FIVE different decks spread out over 18 projects/releases, some of which were available only via subscription through his website and were printed in very small numbers.  I can't think of any other playing card artist who was ever so incredibly productive in a twelve-month period - Jackson, when do you get any sleep? 

Robinson's projects released from July 1, 2018 through June 30, 2019 are, in alphabetical order:

• Arthurian (Gold Edition)
• Deck The Halls (Red Christmas & White Christmas Editions)
• Equinox I
• Equinox II (Gilded, Limited & Standard Editions)
• Hand Built Motorcycle Show Exclusive Commemorative Deck
• Haunted 8's
• Imperial (Crimson, Expert Exclusive & White Editions)
• Intaglio (Gallery Edition)
• Kings Wild Tigers (Gold, Limited, Silver & Standard Editions)
• Labyrinth (Gilded Crimson, Murphy's Magic Exclusive, Solved, Unsolved Gilded, Unsolved Limited & Unsolved Standard Editions)
• Maduro (Silver & Gold Editions)
• Noble Train (Gilded, Limited & Standard Editions)
• Old Ironsides
• Olive Tally Ho (Gilded, Legacy, Players & Premium Editions)
• Pi (Craft, Gilded, Limited & Standard Editions)
• Revival Cycles (Gilded, Limited & Standard Editions)
• Six Foot Five Promotion Deck
• Thoroughbred (Gilded, Limited & Standard Editions)

Also of note is the fact that the Kings Wild Tigers Limited Edition deck earned Robinson Third Place in the 2019 Dieline Awards for Package Design, Games and Sports Division

Special thanks to my wife, Ann Justi, for her valued assistance in compiling all the links you see below.

Kickstarter page for Maduro Silver
KWP page for Maduro Gold
KWP page for Olive Tally Ho Players Edition
Portfolio52 page for Olive Tally Ho Premium Edition
Portfolio52 page for Olive Tally Ho Gilded Edition
KWP page for Olive Tally Ho Legacy Edition
Kickstarter page for Kings Wild Tigers Standard Edition
Ebay listing for matched-number set of Gold/Silver KW Tigers
KWP page for artist proof overrun decks of Haunted 8's
Portfolio52 listing for Old Ironsides
Portfolio52 listing for Old Ironsides Artist Proof
KWP page for Deck the Halls White Christmas
Portfolio52 page for Deck the Halls Red Christmas
Portfolio52 page for Six Foot Five Promotion Deck
KWP page for white/red Intaglio Gallery Edition
EPCC page for Imperial Expert Exclusive Edition
KWP page for Imperial Crimson Edition
KWP page for Imperial White Edition
KWP page for Pi Standard Edition
Portfolio52 page for Pi Limited Edition
Ebay listing for Pi Gilded Edition
KWP page for Labyrinth Unsolved Standard Edition
KWP page for Labyrinth Unsolved Gilded Edition
KWP page for Labyrinth Solved Edition
Murphy's Magic Supplies page for Labyrinth Murphy's Magic Exclusive
Reddit topic on Labyrinth Gilded Crimson Labyrinth
KWP page for Equinox II Standard Edition
Portfolio52 page for Equinox II Limited Edition
Portfolio52 page for Equinox II Gilded Edition
KWP page for Noble Train Standard Edition
Ebay listing for Noble Train Limited Edition
Ebay listing for Noble Train Gilded Edition
Ebay listing for Revival Cycles Standard Edition
Bikernet blog post for Revival Cycles Limited Edition
Worthpoint listing for Revival Cycles Gilded Edition
Revival Cycles page for Hand Built Motorcycle Show Exclusive Commemorative Deck
KWP page for Thoroughbred Standard Edition
Portfolio52 page for Thoroughbred Limited Edition
Portfolio52 page for Thoroughbred Gilded Edition

This year could be a big one for Jody Eklund of design studio Black Ink Playing Cards - he's a double nominee in the Diamond Awards.  In addition to being selected for Deck of the Year for his work on Top Aces of World War II (a sequel project to last year's Top Aces of World War I), he's been nominated for Artist of the Year for that deck as well as his Devastation Silver Edition (a new edition of the Devastation series, a deck release dedicated to the people who create massively-destructive weapons of war) and Golden Spike 150th Anniversary Edition (a revision of his 2014 project, Golden Spike/Bicycle Golden Spike, timed for the sesquicentennial of the epic project which connected the Western and Eastern United States via railroad, paving the way for greater emigration and settlement in the West).

Kickstarter page for Top Aces of World War II
Kickstarter page for Devastation Silver Edition
Kickstarter page for Golden Spike 150th Anniversary
Interview with the artist by EndersGame conducted December 2018
Black Ink Playing Cards home page
Jody Eklund's artist home page

Montenzi works from his base in New Zealand.  He made quite a splash with his introductory deck, Haere Mai, back in 2016.  During the awards period for 2018-2019, he designed and produced two decks that were sequels to his previous releases.

Hello Tiki v2, the sequel release to Hello Tiki, came out initially in one version, a red deck, but Montenzi introduced as a stretch goal a very striking "Black Ultra" version, printed with black ink and silver and red metallic foils, and later also produced a white version.  The Black Ultra was printed by Cartamundi while the other two versions were printed by USPC.

The NEO:Wave decks were the follow-up to his NEO: deck releases.  The Classic edition was printed by USPC, while the Ultra edition (foil and ink) and the Ultra Player's edition (ink without foil) were printed by Cartamundi.

Kickstarter page for Hello Tiki v2
Kickstarter page for NEO:Wave
Artist's homepage/online store
Studio's Facebook page

UPDATE: the artist contacted me to inform me that he works under the name Montenzi now.  Also, he stated that the photos we posted of the Hello Tiki V2 project, obtained from his Kickstarter project, were not current and that the finished product does not look like this - we have removed the photos and invited the artist to post current photos.

So, it's happened.  The US market is better than 90% (if not better than 99%) foreign-owned!

Gaming Partners International was the owner of Paulson, a printer that specialized in casino decks.  They bought Gemaco from USPC when the Justice Department insisted that they divest it - y'know, anti-monopoly do still exist, even if they're pretty loosely enforced these days.  Well, as of May this year, that company was bought up by none other than Angel Playing Cards, based in Kyoto, Japan.

I have nothing but good things to say about Angel - I have a few of their decks and I love the quality of them, plus they have really nice artwork for their court cards.  But with Cartamundi buying USPC, that means the only major US-based playing card company left at this point would be Liberty Playing Cards, owned by Gambler's Warehouse in Dallas.