Pamela Colman Smith
Pamela Colman Smith (16 February 1878 – 18 September 1951), nicknamed "Pixie", was a British artist, illustrator, writer, publisher, and occultist. She is best-known for illustrating the Rider–Waite tarot deck (also called the Rider–Waite–Smith or Waite–Smith deck) for Arthur Edward Waite. This tarot deck became the standard among tarot card readers, and remains the most widely used today. Smith also illustrated over 20 books, wrote two collections of Jamaican folklore, edited two magazines, and ran the Green Sheaf Press, a small press focused on women writers. Biography Smith was born at 28 Belgrave Road in Pimlico, part of central London. She was the only child of a merchant from Brooklyn, New York (before it was part of New York City), Charles Edward Smith (son of Brooklyn mayor Cyrus Porter Smith), and his wife Corinne Colman (sister of the painter Samuel Colman). The family was based in Manchester for the first decade of Smith's life, but they moved to Jamaica when Charles Smith took a job in 1889 with the West India Improvement Company (a financial syndicate involved in extending the Jamaican railroad system). The Smiths lived in the capital, Kingston, for several years, traveling to London and New York. By