04/01/2026
Stuart Kaplan ! An unsung hero. You would not know what Tarot is if it wasn't for this man
Happy Birthday, Stuart R. Kaplan!
The founder and chairman of U.S. Games Systems, Inc. was born on April 1st, 1932 in the Bronx.
In 1968 while traveling for business in Europe, Stuart attended the Nuremberg Toy Fair in search of game ideas and gifts for his children. He discovered an intriguing deck of cards unlike anything he had ever seen before. He brought the pack of Swiss 1JJ Tarot back to New York and started selling it to bookstores. The deck began to sell well but there was no instruction book available, so Stuart wrote Tarot Cards for Fun and Fortune Telling.
With these products Stuart launched U.S. Games Systems, the first company to publish tarot decks in the U.S. He chose the Fool card from the deck as the company logo because it represents the willingness to take a leap of faith and follow an uncharted path (and his birthday is April 1, April Fool’s Day).
The Rider-Waite deck, illustrated by Pamela Colman Smith, would become the most iconic and beloved tarot deck in the world. Stuart made it his personal mission to bring Pamela Colman Smith the recognition she richly deserved. He spent years researching Smith and collecting her original art and publications, which would be showcased in his book Pamela Colman Smith: The Untold Story.
Stuart’s dedication to education also led him to write one of the most extensive bodies of work on the tarot, the four-volume Encyclopedia of Tarot.
Stuart believed that tarot cards are an unbound book, and by shuffling the cards a new story is revealed. The person reading the cards brings their own unique interpretation to each reading of an individual card and the cards in combination.
