There is a lot of history lessons in this deck of card. Firstly, the face cards seem to have their own element. Hearts is water, clubs is fire, spades and diamonds are earth and wind. This is based of playing cards before the modern day french design, when the suits were just this. There are also alchemy symbols for the element on the jokers, ace, and face cards. You can also see traits of the spanish suits in the face cards as well. Cups, coins, swords, and clubs.
Also in the 1800's, playing cards were packaged in an embossed sleeve, and tissue paper wrapped the cards to further protect them. Obviously, the embossed tuck case is referenced to that idea.
Not sure if this applies or not, but the original indicators in the left top and right bottom were called squeezers due to the fact you could squeeze the cards together and still see what cards you were holding. The smaller type and pips, might be a reference to this.
Also the sword seems to be a big theme for this deck but I am not sure what precisely it is referring to.
