Pamela Colman-Smith, nicknamed Pixie, a twenty-two-year-old American citizen living in London was going through an existential crisis. On this day in November, Smith needed money to market and finance a publishing company that featured a cutting-edge magazine called “The Green Sheaf.” Pixie, like the Peter Pan of her illustrations, began to feel that her friends had stopped believing in her.
Pixie began doing illustrations for theatrical set design and theatrical costume design as a child living in London. Her mother was a successful writer of illustrated children’s books. Her father traveled regularly between Brooklyn, Jamaica and London as an auditor for an Industrial Financial Corp that owned the Jamaica Railway. Helen Terry, a world-famous Shakespearean stage actress and co-founder of the Lyceum Theatre, was her neighbor. Terry became a mentor to her, giving the energetic, dark-haired, dark-eyed girl the nickname Pixie. The family lived in Jamaica during Pixie’s teenage years.
Facing racial issues in New York, Colman-Smith felt that London was her best option for a career. Pixie left Pratt College in Brooklyn in 1899 and traveled to London with his father. Her father died that same year leaving her an orphan. Pixie’s first network of clients came about through her association with Terry and the Lyceum Theater group. Her career skyrocketed. Her first illustrated publication of Afro-Jamaican folk tales, Annancy Stories, was a success. She continued to build her client network through small poetry plays and story readings at her home. Her list included famous playwrights, authors, poets, and actors of the time. She excelled in theatrical set design and costume design. Her clients were amazed at the ease with which she could make an illustration out of the thought they were trying to project. If you think it’s easy, try it. You will soon change your mind. She was able to monetize her synesthesia. That is viewing images while listening to music. Everyone has that, to some degree, but hers was extremely advanced. Her fans loved the intellectual tingle that her art evoked.
Although she was the daughter of the 2nd industrial revolution, her illustrations excluded everything related to the mechanical age. She was always willing to share her knowledge and experience with other artists. She advised them to have the same energy that moves a piston.
His client list included the most successful playwrights, writers, poets, and stage actors of the early 20th century. In his innocence, he felt that his clients were his friends. Pamela Coleman Smith was unable to obtain a small business loan. It was impossible at that time. No one would lend money for a woman-owned business, especially a one-woman-owned business. She was paid on commission.
Smith started the post and used everything he had as leverage to make it work. He had the best content and images from the most respected artists in his network of clients. She continued doing set design and invested the commissions in the magazine. Her graphics were now attributed to the Green Sheaf School, indicating that Pixie had a good grasp of market branding techniques. The young woman had worked in the commercial art industry as an illustrator since childhood and she had a keen understanding of the latest technology.
Without funds for modern equipment, she was forced to use a centuries-old technique for the binding process. She was a quint, but Smith’s business plan called for Avant Garde. The subscription rate did not meet expectations. The business was under capitalized. It failed after 13 issues. Pamela Coleman Smith closed it. Poor Fool, she found herself at rock bottom financially.
Once he was fiscally stable again, his career changed direction. He completed a major project that would become the defining project of his career. He was guaranteed complete artistic control. An immense project, it consisted of 80 illustrations for the Rider-Waite Tarot Deck, accurately illustrated, delivered in 6 months. The project was delivered on time, on budget, to the complete satisfaction of the author, Arthur Waite. Platform sales were extremely successful. The only acknowledgment Pixie received was a line in Waite’s accompanying book, “I commissioned a young woman to do the illustrations.” That was it. No waste, no intellectual property. In a letter to his business partner, Alfred Stiglitz of the world famous Stiglitz Studio, he said of the project: “It was a great project for very little money.” What contractor hasn’t made the same statement once or twice? No one knows how much Pixie left on the table, but Waite had a reputation for being tight-fisted and the contract was verbal.
Pixie drifted away from her Golden Dawn friends after that. She continued to do fantastic illustrations for the Shakespearean Theater and for publications but on a press scale. She got very involved in Women’s Suffrage. Female editors were wary of the danger of an angry male population. She did a lot of work for community work projects, such as international aid agencies and veterans programs. Her uncle from Brooklyn died and left her enough inheritance to help her escape the rat race and move as far away from London as possible and stay in England. She moved to the town of Lizard, in Cornwall. That is the area that was known to have the highest concentration of goblins.
His last visit to the United States was when he visited a friend in Brooklyn in 1946. A devout Catholic, he died in 1951. His name and ideas faded into antiquity.
In the Tarot deck, El Loco has no number, it does not belong to any suit, it can go anywhere. The fool is a free spirit who always appears unexpectedly. That’s what happened to Stuart Kaplan of US Games in 2009 when he released the Centennial Edition of the Rider Waite Smith deck. He sells more than 1.5 million decks each year, mostly as stocking stuffers at Christmas. That makes Pamela Colman Smith the most successful illustrator of the 21st century.