Sylvanus Carroll Faunce - Wildflower Card Game Collection

The Wild Flower Card Game is a creation of painter and textile designer, Sylvanus Carroll Faunce (1855-1949). Between 1912 and 1915, he painted in gouache many of the flowers his wife gathered and identified near Estes Park, Colorado. The smaller works in the collection were intended to be printed as “The Mountain Wild Flower Card Game for children and young folks,” to be sold to tourists going through Colorado on their way to and from the 1915 Panama Exposition. Larger works in the collection were to have been printed and sold to tourists or to schools and libraries.

Faunce, however, never found a publisher for the game or the larger prints, though he did create designs for a box cover and card backs, write up a description of the game, and group and mount the small flower paintings according to the rules of the game. The collection was eventually sold by Faunce’s daughter, Eugenia Wetherill. In 1988, the current owner of the collection, Jared Morse, investigated the cost of having the game printed, then later sold it to Bea Taplin, Denver Botanic Gardens life trustee. She donated the paintings and related materials to the Helen Fowler Library’s Waring collection in 2002.