Giant House of Cards

DATE - 1953

The Eameses designed the original House of Cards in 1952, exemplifying the design duo’s appreciation for the uncommon beauty of common things. The Original Picture Deck consists of fifty-four playing-sized cards, each card with six slots, two on either side and one at both ends, so they may be locked together to create three-dimensional structures. The Giant House of Cards is the largest of the series, containing twenty cards, each seven by eleven inches.

Additional Information

The Giant House of Cards, still available to this day are made of 8-ply cardboard, making them not only larger, but more rigid than their predecessors, allowing even more volume to be enclosed. Each card in the set was printed on one side with graphic images: drawings, photograpghs and even historical engravings.

According to the box label the cards were: “Colorful Panels to Build With * Each with a graphic Design taken from the Arts * The Sciences * The World Around Us.”

The images were chosen from dozens of candidates as examples of the richness of our historical visual traditions and of the world around us. On the backside they printed squares of colors on white fields.