Pamela Colman Smith (February 16, 1878—September 18, 1951) was an artist, illustrator, and writer. She is best known for designing the Rider-Waite-Smith deck of divinatory tarot cards for Arthur Edward Waite.
Smith was born in Pimlico, Middlesex (now London), England the daughter of an American merchant from Brooklyn, Charles Edward Smith and his American wife Corinne Colman. Due to her father’s job with the West India Improvement Company, the fa...
more
Pamela Colman Smith (February 16, 1878—September 18, 1951) was an artist, illustrator, and writer. She is best known for designing the Rider-Waite-Smith deck of divinatory tarot cards for Arthur Edward Waite.
Smith was born in Pimlico, Middlesex (now London), England the daughter of an American merchant from Brooklyn, Charles Edward Smith and his American wife Corinne Colman. Due to her father’s job with the West India Improvement Company, the family often moved, spending time in London, Kingston, Jamaica and Brooklyn, New York.
Smith's mother died when she was just 10 years old, and, often separated from her father due to his work, she was taken under the wing of the Lyceum Theatre group in London led by Ellen Terry, Henry Irving, and Bram Stoker. Her early teens years spent travelling around the country with the theatre group did much to influence her later art work.
By 1893, Smith had moved to Brooklyn to be with her father, where, at the age of 15, she enrolled at the relatively...
less
