Reigns Tollinghurst

Edith Tollinghurst was an English commercial artist who worked extensively throughout the 1950s and 1960s. She was famous for her stylised portrayals of family life, and her work was frequently featured in lifestyle magazines of the day. Her work is perhaps best exemplified by her illustrations for the 1957 Woman's Weekly's feature "How To Host The Perfect Dinner Party"; an article that was reprinted without variation for eight successive years.From 1964 until her death in 1970, she designed and illustrated what is now known as the Tollinghurst Tarot. It is said that she toiled day and night on the deck, painstakingly and repeatedly reworking the illustrations. When it was complete, just a handful of readings were ever given, but the surviving sitters all attest to the otherworldly beauty of the cards and to the staggering complexity of the layouts. These same accounts also maintain that her prophecies were, without fail, 100% accurateOn the 18th of November 1970, Edith - in a move possibly prompted by a sharp decline in her own fortunes - used the cards to foretell her own future. The prognosis was bleak: the deck foresaw her violent end before the day's close. Edith, in a bid to thwart the cards, set about burning her life's work. However, the resulting fire engulfed both the house and its mistress, simultaneously upholding the deck's flawless track record.`TOLLINGHURST' outlines our speculations as to the nature and substance of those destroyed cards.