LA SAINTE-SATURE

LA SAINTE-SATURE LA SAINTE-SATURE is a cardgame project of 54 cards drawn by Erwan Roussel which will be printed using engraving techniques and edited by Matière Grasse editions. 📷 We would like to offer you a unique object: original illustrations, a new court cards system and all that entirely homemade in our workshop through unusual printing techniques to say the least (laser-woodcut !!!) which contrast with classic card games industrial productions. AND we want you to be able to receive this pure marvel on time for Christmas season!!! GAME HISTORY La Sainte-Sature game is composed of four colours: Heart-wells, Dinars, Vines and Stakes, derivatives of traditional English Hearts, Diamonds, Spades and Clubs. Inspired by German and Italian card games, as well as Tarot of Marseilles, the cards evolve in a rich and organic way as parts of a medieval and pagan environment. 📷 Heart-wells are incessantly sweating and trickling wineskins, Dinars are crowns entangling with chains and pearls, Stakes are spears getting arranged and aligned, and Vines are relentlessly proliferating leaves (see below) 📷 In the game we present, court cards are neither Jacks, Queens nor Kings. We had at heart to not perpetuate this tradition of domination symbols (of age, of gender, of class) which have done their time but which we do not want anymore ! Instead, La Sainte-Sature tells the evolution of one single character which initiatory journey we will follow to sublime the elements’ accumulation ! Court cards will indeed represent the three steps of the elements’ organisation relying on architectural imagery, namely : 📷 (in English, it would translate by "First Fix", "Second Fix" and Chef d'Oeuvre!) We have taken these terms from their craftsmanship context and associated them to simple symbols making the new court cards instinctively recognisable and easy to play! An example with Stakes above: Gros Oeuvre (First Fix) depicts a character collecting spears (which have accumulated from card 1 to 10) and fumbling with them. In Second Oeuvre (Second Fix), he isolates himself and focuses on mastering those spears. In Chef d’Oeuvre he eventually, through his rigour and intransigeance, made himself an impregnable fortress. Each family tells, following the same format, its own initiatory quest and the unexpected paths chosen by its characters to handle la Sainte-Sature. These stories will also be incorporated in the game in the form of a booklet for you to not miss a thing! A FEW TECHNICAL DETAILS La Sainte-Sature will have the classical framework of card games: 54 cards (13 for each family + 2 jokers), 65x105mm format (longer than French standard) with rounded corners. 📷 The printing will be done through laser woodcut ! This technique has become quite the speciality for Matière Grasse editions and allows for a unique texture and printing quality (thanks to wood texture and its ink absorption) meanwhile being able to keep the subtlety of Erwan’s drawing (thanks to laser precision). It is also a nod to card games production which started in the 14th century using the very same woodcut ! Tradition AND innovation, it’s a win-win! It is not the first time we use this technique as we relied on it to edit the Tarot Païen (the picture above was extracted from said project) as well as a comic revue : Matière Grasse 5, which were both successfully funded on KissKissBankBank! The wood matrixes were then printed using Heidelberg typographic presses (see above), a German mechanical wonder from the 60s, which we borrow from Studio Pression in Tarn! In the 60s, planned obsolescence was obsolete it seems. The game will then be assembled by hand as can be seen below (because at Matière Grasse, we love elbow grease) and packed in a pretty box (which graphism is yet to be finished)! WHO ARE WE Erwan Roussel is the drawer of La Sainte-Sature game. He is an illustrator based between Rennes and Brussels. Equipped with an archaeological background and contacts coming straight from hell, he developed a drawing and micro-editions practice filled with queer softness, old references and witchy transformations. As a folkloric and popular imageries passionate, he takes care in offering rereadings and representations to enchant iconographies and queer imaginaries. 📷 Photo : Renaud Duc ······················································································ Mathieu Zanellato is the editor/printer of this project. He created a few years ago Matière Grasse editions that make doing painful, costly and by no means profitable projects that no one else would have bother editing a point of honor. He edits books, posters, t-shirts, card games, wallpaper… basically everything that can bear with thick coats of ink and his strong passion for printed matter. Since 2019, he use Tarn located Studio Pression ’s machines to print in woodcut, linocut, letterpress, foilstamp, stencil and many others’ productions. 📷