With his first foray into the custom playing card community, Mahdi Gilbert (Mahdi the Magician) has created an instant classic with the Hidden Leaves deck of cards.
Dedicating more than a year to its design, Mahdi has blended traditional Japenese and French aesthetics to reimagine the iconic Bicycle Rider Back playing card style in a way we’ve never seen before. Developing the Hidden Leaves playing cards was an extremely personal adventure for Mahdi and this deck of cards, which serves as a spiritual homage to Le Samouraï, the 1967 French masterpiece by Jean-Pierre Melville, offers an exclusive peek into his inner thoughts.
Each pasteboard depicts the enduring battle of life, lies and love through vibrant custom illustrations and its magnificent blue two-way back design is embedded with the Tree of Life whose roots, branches and leaves depict humanity’s heartbeat.
Mahdi strived to complete this theme with a vintage look by using an outdated printing technique to create purposeful imperfections and removing all indices from the playing cards. In addition to enabling some tremendously unique card magic effects, many magicians have found that the latter helps simplify the playing cards for their audiences—ultimately making routines easier to follow.
However, while this deck of cards may look antiquated, it is printed by the United States Playing Card Company on their highest quality stock with a premium smooth finish to ensure superb handling and shuffling.