I'll give you my Art Historical and tarotist point of view on the topic.
There is a fundamental difference between readers who see a tarot deck as ritual or magical object, touched with satin gloves after elaborate rituals of cleansing the room, incantation and meditation - and those who see it just as a parcel of printed cards, held with a rubber band and thrown into the depths of a bag, to be replaced when worn out. Most of us come somewhere in this scala.
I respect all my tools, whether it's books, cards or incense, and I respect an artist's vision. But when I feel that additional "stuff" on a card face disturbs my work with it, then I remove it. Basically, all the decks I've allowed myself to trim were Lo Scarabeos, where I had the strong suspicion that the artists didn't have much of a say in the addition of a border or a whole "framework of frames".
When I get the feeling that a deck would benefit from viewing it without borders, I take out my scissors and trim, round the corners and/or edge it. That's especially true for decks where I feel the artwork has a dynamic character and the spreads look like storybooks - energy from one card entering into the next. Trimmed or borderless decks lend themselves well to "narrative" readings. (I have posted pictures of my trimmed decks often enough - Haindl, Cosmic and Fey have all benefited in my opinion from this ruthless operation, not to mention the Thoth! and the Lo Scarabeo Vacchetta changed so much without a very jarring border....But it's really a matter of personal preference).
Constellations Tarot - the border serves an important function in unifying the deck visually
Celestial Tarot - the borders are intrusive, and because they're so much brighter than the art work (but not neutral like white or gray would have been), they make the art work look darker, more confusing and smaller
In other cases, I feel that the artist has spent a lot of time and love on the borders, and I don't touch them. Robert Place decks need the cool white frames. His quite static, solemn art (even his moving figures look frozen) presents one picture after another, and it works very well. The Constellation Tarot has beautiful starry borders which connect the cards visually; in a reading, a whole starry sky opens up, and the eye wanders between the constellations. How I wish they'd done something similar to the Celestial! the sickly blue border really diminishes the art work.
In art, adding a passepartout turns a sketch into a presentable work of art. One of my teachers when I studied Fine Arts was immediately suspicious when he saw "too polished" presentations mounted on multiple, multi-colour passepartout frames. They add distance.
Oil paintings were traditionally mounted in impressive frames, often gilded and carved. Some tarot decks make use of this tradition, like the Touchstone or Mystical Tarot with their heavy frames.
Mystical Tarot - imitating a carved ornamental frame
- Touchstone Tarot Happy Squirrel.jpg (8.09 KiB) Viewed 2035 times
Touchstone Tarot - a simply wooden frame with a name plate for each card for a museal look
Sketches, drawings (pencil, coloured pencils, pastels, ink), etchings and water colours were traditionally mounted on neutral coloured paper mounts (passepartouts) and if framed, very simply. They are sensitive to light and are often presented in museums in glass vitrines under felt protection.
There are decks that honour the "lighter" and simpler techniques by adding simple white borders that let the art work shine.
The Wild Unknown Tarot (ink drawings with water colour washes), the Blake Tarot (etchings), the Daniloff Tarot (water colours) all add white borders that are not intrusive and remind of the traditional way these techniques were presented.
The Wild Unknown Tarot - pen and ink drawings, simple white borders. You can see the frame hand-drawn by the artist and some lines "overstepping" the boundaries, supporting the impression that we're close to the original drawings of the artist - nothing was smoothed or cut off from her work
- william blake tarot ten of painting delight.jpg (20.18 KiB) Viewed 2035 times
William Blake Tarot - etchings with ornamental borders inspired by book layouts designed by William Blake himself, including his handwriting
Daniloff Tarot - water colour in the style of Ottonian/Carolingian book illuminations, simple white borders that give the image space to "breathe". The images themselves are framed by a thin dark and then a golden line, like inserts of illuminations in such manuscripts where text and illumination belong together but are clearly separate.
Then there are the decks where the artists and/or publishers went against these age-old rules and overwhelmed the artwork with jarring colours or fonts, too-complex frame systems, too much text or simply too-dark colours. (You are totally welcome to disagree hotly with me!)
- spiral-02414.jpg (17.8 KiB) Viewed 2035 times
Spiral Tarot. I really hate what they did with the beautiful and evocative artwork. Too much purple, even for my purplish tastes. Purple is a very strong colour that influences all the colours around it - we'll talk about simultaneous contrast later, but here you can see how the border distorts the overall picture of a spread. The graduations of the border colour which work well in the Byzantine Tarot look de-stabilizing here. Let's say no more about the font. I hope the designer of this deck presentation is properly ashamed - I can't imagine why the artist agreed, and hope for a new edition with borders that let the art work shine.
- goddess tarot.jpg (24.92 KiB) Viewed 2035 times
Goddess Tarot. Beautiful, yes. Lovely colours, yes. But I confess I have a problem with the proportions of the border. It eats up so much card space. What a pity. It serves a purpose - it removes the goddesses, we're like in a shrine and can see the goddess through all kinds of barriers. But doesn't the tarot want to help us bring these goddesses into our lives? Compare this to the Etruscan where a similar colour is used to much better effect imho.
I didn't buy Spiral and Goddess deck in the end because of the borders. They're too distracting for me. Ymmv.
Vacchetta Tarot by Lo Scarabeo. Horror of all horrors. Who thought that choosing this olive-ish green would do any good to the deck? The multi-lingual borders have all but disappeared by now, and what a blessing that has been. When I trimmed this deck, it came alive for me. But the proportions are okay - at least the borders are relatively slender.
Here is my trimmed version:
And now for the poor Shapeshifter Tarot.
Lisa Hunt's artwork is beautifully done, gentle water colour over pencil drawings - with the lightest of touches. The dark blue is much too dominant and electric for my taste and distorts the balance of colours in her work. Most of Hunt's colour choices are lower-saturation, and the strong blue simply makes them look faded. I guess trimming would do the deck a world of good and make the images shine.
Some positive examples?
Shadowscapes Tarot. Lovely shimmering lavender borders, not to broad - yes, having more real estate for the detailed water colour paintings would have been wonderful, but the esthetic choice of the borders makes sense to me. Others have trimmed the borders but I think they work well. The border is of a medium brightness which doesn't overpower either the darker or the lighter focus points of the beautiful images. The low saturation doesn't throw the colours in the artwork off. Designers of the Shapeshifter, take note! This is how you choose a colour that shows off your deck instead of making it disappear visually.
Orbifold Tarot. The borders give information about the card, they're part of the completely abstract design.
Etruscan Tarot. The warm orange-brown background emphasizes the colour scheme of the cards and reminds me of clay, one of the materials the Etruscans used so well. In a reading, you get a warmly-coloured wall with single images, a bit like looking into an Etruscan tomb.
In my opinion, borders can affect the way we perceive the art work of a deck. And since I believe that most readers do react to the visual impact of a certain deck (otherwise we'd all read with post-it cards, inscribed with a scribbled "Hierophant" or "6/Cups", and nobody would buy more than one deck...), we have to take them into account.
Borders separate the images from each other and thus supports a reading style that moves from one card to the others. Let's call this the "movie stills method" as opposed to the "story board method" mentioned above where the images melt into each other. In practice, I guess most people use both styles. Borders can give important information but also irritate and even undermine the deck's artwork visually.
It's a matter of personal choice whether we prefer borderless decks, whether we trim and edge our decks, whether we can disregard borders or get really really irritated by them.
I'm a basically conservative person and prefer to see traditional borders as outlined above - oil paintings can deal with strong borders, water colours not so much. I'm also a rebel at heart and like to see artists doing interesting things with borders or just leaving them away. And the proportion between card image/artwork and the surrounding frames, borders and lettering must be preserved, otherwise the artwork's impact is diminished and it's more difficult to "climb into the card". And that's often a good method to get more answers.
