More playing cards! One of my favorite decks is in the holdings of the British Museum. These are referred to as the Stuckely Decks after the man who exhibited them to The Society of Antiquaries in 1763. The cards themselves were collected by Dr. Thomas Rawlinson at an earlier date. They came to the museum through the collection of Lady Charlotte Schreiber. You should remember that name if you're studying early cards. Look it up.
This particular portion of the collection was put together in the 18th Century and contains three sets of cards. The first is a badly degraded deck dated to the late 15th Century, the second is an 18th Century watercolor recreation of the deck done using alternate colors, and the third is the court cards of an 18th Century French deck.
The first set can be viewed here:
The second and third sets can be seen here:
As you can see, the second set is a later copy (18th Century) of the first set which dates to a much earlier time (15th Century). Because the second set is in much better condition I elected to re-create that deck first. I retained the original colors because it seemed like the thing to do and because I was intrigued by some of the color choices the 18th Century copyist had made. The decision to give the court figures red hair (instead of the usual yellow or black) was particularly intriguing. I mentally dubbed this deck "The Redheads".
I have all the artistic skill of a rock. Well, maybe not a rock, but I'm not a skilled artist. My usual modus operandi when faced with a deck like this is to preserve as much of the original work as possible. So I downloaded the images and set to work. I cleaned up as much as I could and then began the work of digitally restoring the cards. The background had to go. It was simply too dirty. On the other hand people seem to prefer the 'olde tyme' look (and, yes, I'm saying that with a little bit of derision). I opted for a darker version of a natural paper coloration. Don't get me started, again, on paper in the Middle Ages; let's just say I should have gone with a lighter background.
I had to recreate the pip cards. I did this by taking the cleanest examples of elements I could find and cleaning them up a little more. Then I cut and pasted those elements to recreate the pip cards. I added an ace to each suit because it allows modern players to play modern games with the deck. The actual deck, as is typical of German style decks of the time, didn't have an ace. I simplified the two of acorns and leaves. This wasn't simple laziness on my part. I got a fairly nice unicorn prepared and then decided I preferred a cleaner representation AND I wanted to make sure my replica didn't get confused with any reproductions the Museum might care to produce in the future.
The courts were more difficult. They were pretty messy to begin with and the unter of bells was missing altogether. I altered a copy of the ober of hearts to make a new unter of bells. Not my finest work but I think it's pretty good. I cleaned up a lot of the faded coloring. My favorite moment working with this deck occurred during this process. As I altered the contrast of the unter of acorns, the archer, the dingy blue colors revealed themselves to be greens. That was awesome. Sort of. Because then I had to go back and alter the entire suit of leaves (which I had already done) to match the greens of the archer. I'm glad I did because it made the entire deck much nicer, but it was one of those moments where I wished I'd gotten it right sooner.
The results can bee seen in this sample image:
I had to give the cards wider borders. Why? Modern printers demand it and it's fairly easy for me to modify the deck if I want to do my own printing. I elected to give the deck a plain back. I would have told you that decorated backs appear very late in the history of cards (18th Century) but I'd have been wrong. Cards were getting decorated backs almost from the very beginning. In this case, however, with no examples to draw from I elected to go with a plain back. It was the most common back choice.
Next for this deck is restoring the original color scheme and putting the correct unter of bells in. When I do that I plan to lighten the color of the background a little because medieval paper makers were quite proficient and the yellowed texture above just doesn't reflect their abilities.
