In 1909, artist Pamela Colman Smith, under the direction of Arthur Edward Waite, created an innovative 78-card tarot deck that would come to be recognized as revolutionary. With descriptive pictures on the 56 Minor Arcana cards, the Rider-Waite deck diverged from the traditional tarot decks used for centuries, and set the standard for nearly every tarot deck published since.
For the Universal Waite deck, Mary Hanson-Roberts has taken Smith's original card designs and enhanced them with rich detail and color.