Myriorama cards are slices of landscape paintings that can be arranged in any order to form continuous scenes. They were invented in the early 19th century by the French artist, Jean-Pierre Brès, as a genteel amusement and an aid to practice drawing composition.
I first heard Sir Philip Pullman recommend them for writing inspiration in his BBC Imagine interview. They also make an appearance in The Secret Commonwealth! Since I couldn’t find a set to purchase, I did what I usually do: I printed my own. This isn’t the same set that Sir Philip uses (his set has 24 cards according to this article), but it was the only one that I could find available in high resolution. It was digitised, appropriately enough, by the Bodleian Library. The illustrator is John Heaviside Clark. The date is 1824. Here is the original. There are a few other myrioramas in the collection, but they’re either incomplete, or too small to be printed:
- Myriorama Second Series (with Italian scenery)
- Polyorama
- Miliorama
- Choriorama
About these Myriorama Cards
This particular set was the first myriorama available in Britain, commissioned by publisher Samuel Leigh. The cards form a rural seaside landscape, with picturesque ruins, thatched cottages, fields, islands, and a lighthouse (flying the Union Jack). Figures in Regency attire are depicted in various activities. There’s a beautiful balance and rhythm to the pictures, and a surprising amount of narrative and descriptive potential, when one looks closely.
Click here to Download Your Cards
There are 16 cards in total, 8 with people, and 8 without. In his advertisement, Leigh boasts that this would allow the player to create an astonishing, 20,922,789,999,000 different scene combinations!
Card Numbers
One of Leigh’s innovations was to number each card, allowing you to remember and recreate scenes. If you have difficulty reading the numbers, you can refer to the image files, which are in order.
Printing
I recommend taking the files down to your local copy shop to be printed. I asked for mine on heavy, textured cardstock (300gr). The images should be printed at A4 or US Letter sizes WITHOUT being resized (unless you want them to be smaller).
I’ve included an optional design for the back of the cards. The background is larger than the page of cards, and if you ensure that all of the images are centred on the page, then you should have plenty of margin for printer movements.
The saturation will depend on the printer and paper you use. The images also look nice in black and white.
Create a Story with Your Myriorama Cards
These Myriorama cards are way more fun than I’d anticipated! Everyone I’ve shown them to becomes instantly absorbed in putting them in some sort of pleasing order.
They’re also an excellent tool for observation, and if you’re a writer, you can use them to practice your descriptive skills.
I created this 2-page worksheet to help you explore the landscape in your Myriorama cards, and to then create a story with them.
Click here to download your worksheet (PDF)
A Few Additional Prompts
- Draw two cards. Imagine they represent a “before and after”.
- How do you decide which figure is the main character, and which are secondary?
- Draw a random card for each of the 8 stages of the One Page Novel method. OR find the card that you think best matches each stage.
- Imagine that each card is a window pane.
- Turn a card upside down, and use some creativity to reflect this change in your story.
- Combine these cards with the Alethiometer Cards and Muse Cards.
Sources
- Myrioramas, Endless Landscapes The Story of a Craze by Ralph Hyde
- Making Visible: The Diorama, the Double and the (Gothic) Subject by Sophie Thomas
