Today I have launched a new card deck, Fibbers 2, which has been designed to perform like a regular card deck, but can be expanded with four additional cards, one per suit, to become a completely new game based on the Fibonacci sequence – 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21
This sequence was discovered while trying to calculate the breeding habits of rabbits, and to celebrate this face, instead of pips, we use families of rabbits to illustrate the fibonacci numbers. Depending on your pledge, you may also receive a copy of the original Fibbers deck.
Designed for a private customer, the original Fibbers deck carries a sea-life theme and where a regular deck uses red and black to represent day and night, this deck has two colours that represent shallow water and deep water. The colours are dark teal and poseidon. On these cards there are sea creatures featured on the fibonacci number cards. The client also requested that the cards be produced in a sure-slip finish for cardistry, so I made sure to decorate the backs with a reversible shell design to offer a pleasing pattern when displayed.
Only 90 of this original deck remain unopened, and are numbered on their seal accordingly from 111 to 200. No further reprint will take place.
The new Fibbers will also be a limited print run, depending on the eventual demand on Kickstarter. The choice of a rabbit theme meant that I had to choose suitable colours to represent day and night in their field, so we opted for Greenery and San Marino, which i’m sure you’ll agree are excellent choices for the artwork provided by the renowned illustrator Becky Bumble (who also happens to be our daughter in law). A gifted artist with an incredible imagination, Becky has worked with us on many previous Kickstarter products for my partner’s business Peblsrock, including a set of five children’s books under the title The Legend of Mermaids Tears. We’re very lucky to have had her input on these cards.
For the uninitiated, in the West, the Fibonacci sequence first appears in the book Liber Abaci (1202) by Leonardo of Pisa, known as Fibonacci. Fibonacci considers the growth of an idealised (biologically unrealistic) rabbit population, assuming that: a single newly born pair of rabbits (one male, one female) are put in a field; rabbits are able to mate at the age of one month so that at the end of its second month a female can produce another pair of rabbits; rabbits never die and a mating pair always produces one new pair (one male, one female) every month from the second month on.
The puzzle that Fibonacci posed was: how many pairs will there be in one year?
So although his work helped him realise the presence of the sequence in nature, everything from a trees branches to an octopuses tentacles, or the spirals in a sunflower and the number of petals in so many plants and flowers, it was his rabbit theory that he is most remembered for. That calculation was essentially made up, a fib if you’d prefer, and that’s what inspired me to choose Fibbers as a name.
The word Fib derives from Fible, another spelling of Fable, and anyone who is a fibber is a storyteller, a fabulist, a fabricator, or in modern terms somebody who tells a harmless lie for entertainment. Once you appreciate that, the word Fibbers seems obvious.
The Fibbers 2 campaign runs from today, July 31st, until the early morning of august 20th 2021. Your support would be extremely gratefully received. Or just take a look and tell a friend. www.kickstarter.com