I have two playing-card-related research projects currently under way. Wellll..... I say research. I really mean Indiana Jones style searches for lost artifacts. A research project is making different kinds of inks; I'm searching for playing cards that haven't been seen in decades.
The first project is a search for the Krech Playing Cards. This partial deck is comprised of two, uncut but damaged, sheets of woodcut cards in a German style. A note written on one of the sheets estimates the cards are from 1440. Literally, it says "CA 1440" in a modern hand. These cards were in the collection of Mr. Alvin William Krech sometime before 1934. To the best of my knowledge these cards have not been seen by the general public since.
If you read my blog you know these cards. Jorge Kelman made an astounding reproduction deck based on these cards. You can tell I really like these cards and his work. Which is part of the reason I set out to find them.
Mr. Alvin W. Krech was a railroad man and a banker in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. He was interested in the history of printing and was, at the time, a noted collector of early printed books. Books printed before the advent of movable-type are called incunabula. He had a number of these and, apparently, these two sheets of cards. He died in 1928 and, so far as I can tell, the collection was distributed to several members of his family.
The family began liquidating his collection in 1936 with the sale of two leaves of a Catholicon he owned. Some of the incunabula seem to have been sold off in 1948 but the playing cards were apparently not sold at that time. In 1969 Mr. Shepard Krech died and the last remaining portion of the collection I've been able to locate, an unknown number of books illustrated by George Cruikshank, apparently went to Yale University as a bequest or as a purchase.
I have been running down leads on these cards and have found a number of places the cards might have gone to. My job has mostly been to eliminate these leads. Believe it or not, finding the cards have not been sold at auction is actually a good thing. If the cards had sold at auction it would be very difficult to determine who bought the cards. As it stands, every lead I eliminate increases the odds that the cards are still with the family. That said, I don't think the family has the cards anymore. I've been in touch with them and they're going to look around, but I think the cards were either sold or donated or, God forbid, lost.
The second search should be a lot easier. The Mamluk Playing Cards in the holdings of the Topkapi Museum were last documented around 1972 when Cartamundi published a re-creation of the deck. I have been trying to determine the location and condition of these cards, and possibly obtain some new photos of them. Despite the fact that these cards are located in a world famous museum they are actually proving more difficult to locate. The Topkapi Sayrai Museum is actually three museums and all three are controlled by government agencies. Sort of like the Library of Congress in the United States. Sort of. The cards don't appear in the online catalog (I think. I don't claim any skill at all with Turkish) and haven't been on display in the past five years, that I have been able to determine. That means I can't refer to the cards by a catalog number.
Worse, without establishing researcher credentials with the appropriate government agency the folks at the Topkapi won't talk to me. So I've got no way to determine if the cards even exist at the moment. Right now my challenge is to get someone at the Topkapi to talk to me. Numerous attempts to contact people by e-mail have failed. I'm in receipt of the standard form they send out to people to establish research credentials but that form is skewed towards archaeology and they assume you will be visiting the country in person so they want passport information. I haven't had a passport in years. So I'm getting one so I can fill out a form so someone will, hopefully, talk to me about the world famous playing cards that don't appear in the museum's catalog and aren't on display.
Sigh.
Monday, March 14, 2016
Thursday, February 25, 2016
Ink
What's the difference between ink and paint? I still can't give you a good definition. The oil-based inks I use for block-printing don't seem all that much different from the oil-based paints I used when I was a child. I'm pretty sure there's a formal definition but I haven't looked it up yet. I probably should. Because when it comes to playing cards I suspect it's going to be significant. In my mind it's largely about the thickness of the media.
Remember how I said this wasn't a reference heavy blog? Keep that in mind.
I've been researching pigments used to produce playing cards. These run the gamut of medieval resources. You can find playing cards that are miniature (or not so miniature, Stuttgart Cards I'm looking at you) paintings. Multiple layers of paper glued together, a gesso prep layer (burnished even), ink, paint, gold leaf, silver leaf and the whole shebang. The Cloister's Cards are another good example of this. The earliest references to card makers are people who were also painters.
At the other end of the scale you can find the mass-produced two and three color cards that came out of the French, German, and Italian factories to supply the domestic and foreign markets. These could be fairly crude affairs and might even have been painted by finger (yeah, I mean finger-painted). These used, at most, five colors and were very definitely not hand painted works of art. When these were not hand-painted (or finger-painted) the ink seems to have typically been applied using stencils rather than multiple blocks. I've found a couple of references to stencil use in the 14th Century and a lead(!) stencil for a rosette from the same time period (holdings of the British Museum). But the first reference to using stencils for making cards is in a census from a town in mid-15th Century Germany.
Inks! I was talking about inks! The National Gallery of Art performed an analysis of the pigments used to color the medieval (15th Century) woodcuts in their collection. Here's a link to a summary.
http://artinprint.org/article/coloring-within-the-lines-the-use-of-stencil-in-early-woodcuts/
Here's a quote from that summary:
Which brings up another good point. Saying I've been researching inks used on playing cards is like saying I've been researching medieval books. When? Where? Ultimately general knowledge needs to be applied to specific cases and that's not always possible. In decks where only the black and white remnants survive it can be impossible to know what colors should be used to recreate that deck. Part of me thinks that's tragic and part of me says 'Oh, well.'
Some random stuff:
-Ink is made in the same way as paint except the binder is typically gum arabic rather than egg-white or egg-yolk. In general. You mix a powder that can be derived from organic (brazilwood, berries, saffron, etc...) or inorganic (clay, copper sulfate, copper acetate, lead carbonate, etc...) sources with water and use gum arabic (dried acacia tree sap) as the binder. Other things can be added to change the color, alter the consistency of the paint, prevent it from spoiling and etc..
-Gutenberg's many contributions to the art of printing included creating a reliable oil-based ink.
-Inks sometimes included an acidic component that helped bring out color and helped the ink sink into the fibers of the paper. That acid could also contribute to destroying the paper over time.
Edit to add some links:
http://www.jcsparks.com/painted/recipes.html
Came across a reference to 18th Century inks for playing cards in Hungary being made with soot (lampblack) and starch glue (wheat paste), in the case of black, and pigments ground with flour in the case of colors. It was a little unclear to me how the non-black colors were done. It would seem to make sense to use the same process for black as for the other colors, just change the pigments used. But the language seems to indicate a difference in the process. Perhaps the black pigment was added to the starch glue rather than being added in as part of the glue-making process?
Remember how I said this wasn't a reference heavy blog? Keep that in mind.
I've been researching pigments used to produce playing cards. These run the gamut of medieval resources. You can find playing cards that are miniature (or not so miniature, Stuttgart Cards I'm looking at you) paintings. Multiple layers of paper glued together, a gesso prep layer (burnished even), ink, paint, gold leaf, silver leaf and the whole shebang. The Cloister's Cards are another good example of this. The earliest references to card makers are people who were also painters.
At the other end of the scale you can find the mass-produced two and three color cards that came out of the French, German, and Italian factories to supply the domestic and foreign markets. These could be fairly crude affairs and might even have been painted by finger (yeah, I mean finger-painted). These used, at most, five colors and were very definitely not hand painted works of art. When these were not hand-painted (or finger-painted) the ink seems to have typically been applied using stencils rather than multiple blocks. I've found a couple of references to stencil use in the 14th Century and a lead(!) stencil for a rosette from the same time period (holdings of the British Museum). But the first reference to using stencils for making cards is in a census from a town in mid-15th Century Germany.
Inks! I was talking about inks! The National Gallery of Art performed an analysis of the pigments used to color the medieval (15th Century) woodcuts in their collection. Here's a link to a summary.
http://artinprint.org/article/coloring-within-the-lines-the-use-of-stencil-in-early-woodcuts/
Here's a quote from that summary:
Scientific analysis of the paints used on early woodcuts indicates that colorists favored inexpensive, water-based paints in a limited palette that included both mineral and organic or dye-based pigments. Typical colors include green (copper-based), orange (lead-based), red (possibly brazilwood- or madder-dye-based), blue (possibly indigo- or woad-dye-based) and yellow (possibly buckthorn-, saffron- or weld-dye-based). Various tones of purple were created using a mixture of red and blue, and a dye-based green paint could be made with a mixture of yellow and blue. Paints on many stencil-colored prints have a smooth, matte appearance because colorists learned to modify their paints by adding chalk (calcium carbonate) to the mixtures, formulating viscous paints that could be applied in even layers that would dry faster and would not bleed beyond the outline of the stencil.Awesome stuff, right? Tons more information in there and, as always, check the bibliography, kids. I was feeling rather chuffed that I'd guessed the composition of a lot of the inks based on how they had aged and how they interacted with the black ink on the cards. The quote above lists red as being an organic-derived ink, but later in the article they show another red-orange that is lead-based. I can find examples of both kinds of red being used on playing cards.
Which brings up another good point. Saying I've been researching inks used on playing cards is like saying I've been researching medieval books. When? Where? Ultimately general knowledge needs to be applied to specific cases and that's not always possible. In decks where only the black and white remnants survive it can be impossible to know what colors should be used to recreate that deck. Part of me thinks that's tragic and part of me says 'Oh, well.'
Some random stuff:
-Ink is made in the same way as paint except the binder is typically gum arabic rather than egg-white or egg-yolk. In general. You mix a powder that can be derived from organic (brazilwood, berries, saffron, etc...) or inorganic (clay, copper sulfate, copper acetate, lead carbonate, etc...) sources with water and use gum arabic (dried acacia tree sap) as the binder. Other things can be added to change the color, alter the consistency of the paint, prevent it from spoiling and etc..
-Gutenberg's many contributions to the art of printing included creating a reliable oil-based ink.
-Inks sometimes included an acidic component that helped bring out color and helped the ink sink into the fibers of the paper. That acid could also contribute to destroying the paper over time.
Edit to add some links:
http://www.jcsparks.com/painted/recipes.html
Came across a reference to 18th Century inks for playing cards in Hungary being made with soot (lampblack) and starch glue (wheat paste), in the case of black, and pigments ground with flour in the case of colors. It was a little unclear to me how the non-black colors were done. It would seem to make sense to use the same process for black as for the other colors, just change the pigments used. But the language seems to indicate a difference in the process. Perhaps the black pigment was added to the starch glue rather than being added in as part of the glue-making process?
Monday, December 14, 2015
What I Think I Know About Early Playing Cards
Bearing in mind that I'm probably completely wrong about some of this:
I think playing cards originated in China and were transmitted through the Middle East to Europe.
-Some of the earliest Italian references to the game refer to it as being a Saracen game and use some variation of the word na'ib to reference the game.
-But there are no instances of cards in India, that I am aware of, during the period when cards would have passed through from China to the Middle East. Cards could have skipped India but I consider this less likely.
-I have looked for references to playing cards in Islamic literature of the time and haven't found any. I would expect a game that is mostly chance to be very firmly denounced by religious scholars of the time and I don't see anything. Since I've barely scratched the surface of the material relating to the medieval Islamic world it could simply be that I haven't yet found one of many, potential, references.
-The earliest cards to survive in the Middle East are the Topkapi deck(s) from the 15th-16th Century. This is well after playing cards are documented in Europe.
-The De Unger card fragment predates all cards by a considerable time frame IF it's actually a playing card fragment (I believe it is) AND the dating is correct (I'm skeptical but I'm not a world class authority on Islamic art).
Playing Cards entered Europe through Spain and Italy at about the same time.
-Sometime just before or in the last quarter of the 14th Century.
-If I had to guess I'd say they entered Italy first.
-Diffusion was incredibly rapid in some areas. In Paris they're outlawing card-play on work days by 1380. Yet cards seem to have avoided England for another couple of decades.
The earliest playing cards were hand drawn/painted.
-The earliest references to playing card manufacturers are people who were also artists.
-Many of the earliest decks (Cloisters, Topkapi) are hand drawn/painted.
-But the fact that cards were available to enough of the working class in 1380 Paris to draw legislation that forbid playing on work days suggests that cards were cheap and plentiful and, thus, not confined to expensive and rare works of art.
Playing cards were probably one of the earliest mass-manufactured items using block printing.
-Which is curious because block printing had been around for a while. It was used in Europe for printing fabric and images of Saints and in the Islamic world for fabric and 'magic' amulets. But printing on paper doesn't become a big thing until the 15th Century.
-Cards tended to be printed using woodblocks. Once printed they were colored, to some degree or another, using stencils, hand-painting, and in the case of at least one deck by finger-painting. I am not aware of any decks of cards that were not colored in some way.
-Red, Yellow, Green, Blue, and Purple seem to have been the primary colors used in stenciled decks. Painted decks used the full-spectrum of colors. The Topkapi deck(s) may have used a couple varieties of gold leaf (adulterated with silver).
-Stencils were not particularly detailed and the paint went over the printed (black) lines and was sometimes off-center.
-It was difficult for printers to produce a uniform card back. This did not prevent them from trying. So while plain backs and mono-color backs were the most popular options early on there are illustrations from quite early showing cards with decorated backs. Diapered patterns (look it up) seem to have been very popular and card makers may have counted on each card being different enough, and similar enough, that individual cards could not be made out from their back alone. This was a technique used in the 18th Century where card makers printed cards with complicated, but individual patterns.
-Cards started off with a single orientation that showed the whole figure of court cards rather than the double-ended, half-figure cards we are used to today.
-Cards lacked corner indices to indicate the value/order of the card and the suit of the card. These were added (number/value first) beginning in the 17th Century.
-Cards were printed on large sheets which were then cut with large scissors to make a finished deck with square corners. In general. There are also examples of cards with non-rectangular shapes. The Cloisters cards are oval. Der Meister der Spielkarten made a 15th Century deck that was round. Some early decks clearly have rounded corners.
-Many (most) of the surviving examples of cards we currently have are printer's cast-offs. Sheets that were not used for one reason or another and were re-cycled to be put to other uses in the print shop.
The paper used to produce playing cards was of a good quality.
-Primarily hemp with linen, hair, and other fiber add ins.
-It seems to have been a pretty durable paper.
-Cards seem to have been printed on paper in which the glue (a starch glue made from wheat flour and water) played a significant role. Multiple sheets seem to have been glued together to form a pasteboard. Later illustrations (wood cuts) will show printed sheets of paper hanging over wood rods to air dry. Putting these together and getting the requisite stiffness suggests the glue was important and that paper was made thick after printing rather than before. We know from later accounts that paper was definitely glued together before printing so perhaps the printed veneer sheet was glued to a paste-board sheet? The truth is that variety ruled. Playing cards made on cardstock (a thick single layer of paper) have been found as have cards made from putting together layers of paper.
-The references to playing cards being fined with chalk and starch appear to refer to the single example of the Cloisters playing cards which were prepared in the fashion of a typical painting by having at least one layer of gesso (starch and chalk) applied. This made the playing cards quite thick and produces an effect not seen in other decks of cards so it's likely this was atypical. The Stuttgart deck was also fined with gesso.
Regional card styles were in place before the middle of the 15th Century. Major design schools include:
-Islamic.
-Latin (Italian and Spanish).
-German (Swiss, German).
-French.
-There were blended forms in the geographic areas between the major regional areas. E.G. there are decks showing combinations of Italian and German elements in the area between Switzerland and Northern Italy.
-As cities became established production centers for playing cards they produced decks for export. So you can find Spanish-style decks being produced in Germany. Or Italian decks being produced in France.
The Islamic Style includes:
-A court composed of a king, a deputy, and an under deputy. The courts are represented by a simple throne and do not have any animals or people depicted.
-The suits are coins, cups, swords (primarily curved with straight swords for the odd numbered cards, less the ace), and polo-sticks.
-Floral decoration plays an enormous role.
-The Topkapi deck is the primary example of this style and is actually a deck comprised of a major contributor deck that has been supplemented with cards from at least one, and possibly two, other decks. The cards are enormous (8 inches high) and each one appears to have been hand made. They were also modified by the addition of the blue fields with Arabic script.
The Latin Style includes:
-A court composed of a king, knight, and page. The courts are represented by human figures. The king is typically seated, the knight is typically mounted.
-The suits are coins, cups (the Spanish style cup is more square/blocky), clubs/batons (the Spanish style club is a crude cudgel that might still have some leaves on it while the Italian style baton is a crafted symbol of position rather than a crude club), and swords (Italian swords are curved except for the ace and, usually, the odd sword on odd numbered cards, Spanish swords are straight, except for, usually, the ace).
-The arrangements of the suit cards are fairly standard within the two styles and the Spanish arrangement is different from the Italian.
-The later you go the more pip cards the Spanish deck does away with. While it starts out with 10's it quickly discards those. In some later decks the 9's are also discarded.
The German Style includes:
-A court composed of a king, over, and under. The courts are represented by human figures. The king is typically seated, the over and under stand. The over is designated by the suit sign being at head level or higher. The under is designated by the suit sign being a foot level. There are examples of mounted overs by they are not frequent. There are also examples of decks with a king, mounted knight, over, and under. There are also decks with queens. In fact, you can find just about any court composition in German decks if you look long enough.
-The suits are typically hearts, leaves, bells, and acorns for German decks. Swiss decks typically use shields, leaves, bells, and acorns. HOWEVER, the Germans put just about anything on a deck. Hunting themes were popular but you can find birds, dogs, crowns, the heads of priests, and lots of other items being used for suits. I have counted more than thirty different suits in use in the various examples of German/Swiss decks.
-German style decks typically use a ten with a Roman numeral ten on them (X). Swiss decks typically use a banner displaying the suit symbol for the ten. You can find instances of both in both (i.e. German decks with banner tens and Swiss decks with X tens).
-Neither deck typically uses an ace (1) card.
The French Style includes:
-A court composed of a king, queen, and jack. The courts are represented by human figures, The king may be seated (in earlier decks) or standing (particularly in later decks) and is typically distinguished by a crown and a robe that reaches the floor. The queen may be seated or standing. The jack is typically standing and has short robes.
-The suits are hearts, diamonds, clubs, and spades though the shapes are called differently in French.
-The French suits were adopted by the English and became the standard international deck we know today.
-Some French decks appear to have had a court composed of two kings and two queens and one jack.
-At least one French deck was made with five suits with the fifth suit being a red crescent.
I think playing cards originated in China and were transmitted through the Middle East to Europe.
-Some of the earliest Italian references to the game refer to it as being a Saracen game and use some variation of the word na'ib to reference the game.
-But there are no instances of cards in India, that I am aware of, during the period when cards would have passed through from China to the Middle East. Cards could have skipped India but I consider this less likely.
-I have looked for references to playing cards in Islamic literature of the time and haven't found any. I would expect a game that is mostly chance to be very firmly denounced by religious scholars of the time and I don't see anything. Since I've barely scratched the surface of the material relating to the medieval Islamic world it could simply be that I haven't yet found one of many, potential, references.
-The earliest cards to survive in the Middle East are the Topkapi deck(s) from the 15th-16th Century. This is well after playing cards are documented in Europe.
-The De Unger card fragment predates all cards by a considerable time frame IF it's actually a playing card fragment (I believe it is) AND the dating is correct (I'm skeptical but I'm not a world class authority on Islamic art).
Playing Cards entered Europe through Spain and Italy at about the same time.
-Sometime just before or in the last quarter of the 14th Century.
-If I had to guess I'd say they entered Italy first.
-Diffusion was incredibly rapid in some areas. In Paris they're outlawing card-play on work days by 1380. Yet cards seem to have avoided England for another couple of decades.
The earliest playing cards were hand drawn/painted.
-The earliest references to playing card manufacturers are people who were also artists.
-Many of the earliest decks (Cloisters, Topkapi) are hand drawn/painted.
-But the fact that cards were available to enough of the working class in 1380 Paris to draw legislation that forbid playing on work days suggests that cards were cheap and plentiful and, thus, not confined to expensive and rare works of art.
Playing cards were probably one of the earliest mass-manufactured items using block printing.
-Which is curious because block printing had been around for a while. It was used in Europe for printing fabric and images of Saints and in the Islamic world for fabric and 'magic' amulets. But printing on paper doesn't become a big thing until the 15th Century.
-Cards tended to be printed using woodblocks. Once printed they were colored, to some degree or another, using stencils, hand-painting, and in the case of at least one deck by finger-painting. I am not aware of any decks of cards that were not colored in some way.
-Red, Yellow, Green, Blue, and Purple seem to have been the primary colors used in stenciled decks. Painted decks used the full-spectrum of colors. The Topkapi deck(s) may have used a couple varieties of gold leaf (adulterated with silver).
-Stencils were not particularly detailed and the paint went over the printed (black) lines and was sometimes off-center.
-It was difficult for printers to produce a uniform card back. This did not prevent them from trying. So while plain backs and mono-color backs were the most popular options early on there are illustrations from quite early showing cards with decorated backs. Diapered patterns (look it up) seem to have been very popular and card makers may have counted on each card being different enough, and similar enough, that individual cards could not be made out from their back alone. This was a technique used in the 18th Century where card makers printed cards with complicated, but individual patterns.
-Cards started off with a single orientation that showed the whole figure of court cards rather than the double-ended, half-figure cards we are used to today.
-Cards lacked corner indices to indicate the value/order of the card and the suit of the card. These were added (number/value first) beginning in the 17th Century.
-Cards were printed on large sheets which were then cut with large scissors to make a finished deck with square corners. In general. There are also examples of cards with non-rectangular shapes. The Cloisters cards are oval. Der Meister der Spielkarten made a 15th Century deck that was round. Some early decks clearly have rounded corners.
-Many (most) of the surviving examples of cards we currently have are printer's cast-offs. Sheets that were not used for one reason or another and were re-cycled to be put to other uses in the print shop.
The paper used to produce playing cards was of a good quality.
-Primarily hemp with linen, hair, and other fiber add ins.
-It seems to have been a pretty durable paper.
-Cards seem to have been printed on paper in which the glue (a starch glue made from wheat flour and water) played a significant role. Multiple sheets seem to have been glued together to form a pasteboard. Later illustrations (wood cuts) will show printed sheets of paper hanging over wood rods to air dry. Putting these together and getting the requisite stiffness suggests the glue was important and that paper was made thick after printing rather than before. We know from later accounts that paper was definitely glued together before printing so perhaps the printed veneer sheet was glued to a paste-board sheet? The truth is that variety ruled. Playing cards made on cardstock (a thick single layer of paper) have been found as have cards made from putting together layers of paper.
-The references to playing cards being fined with chalk and starch appear to refer to the single example of the Cloisters playing cards which were prepared in the fashion of a typical painting by having at least one layer of gesso (starch and chalk) applied. This made the playing cards quite thick and produces an effect not seen in other decks of cards so it's likely this was atypical. The Stuttgart deck was also fined with gesso.
Regional card styles were in place before the middle of the 15th Century. Major design schools include:
-Islamic.
-Latin (Italian and Spanish).
-German (Swiss, German).
-French.
-There were blended forms in the geographic areas between the major regional areas. E.G. there are decks showing combinations of Italian and German elements in the area between Switzerland and Northern Italy.
-As cities became established production centers for playing cards they produced decks for export. So you can find Spanish-style decks being produced in Germany. Or Italian decks being produced in France.
The Islamic Style includes:
-A court composed of a king, a deputy, and an under deputy. The courts are represented by a simple throne and do not have any animals or people depicted.
-The suits are coins, cups, swords (primarily curved with straight swords for the odd numbered cards, less the ace), and polo-sticks.
-Floral decoration plays an enormous role.
-The Topkapi deck is the primary example of this style and is actually a deck comprised of a major contributor deck that has been supplemented with cards from at least one, and possibly two, other decks. The cards are enormous (8 inches high) and each one appears to have been hand made. They were also modified by the addition of the blue fields with Arabic script.
The Latin Style includes:
-A court composed of a king, knight, and page. The courts are represented by human figures. The king is typically seated, the knight is typically mounted.
-The suits are coins, cups (the Spanish style cup is more square/blocky), clubs/batons (the Spanish style club is a crude cudgel that might still have some leaves on it while the Italian style baton is a crafted symbol of position rather than a crude club), and swords (Italian swords are curved except for the ace and, usually, the odd sword on odd numbered cards, Spanish swords are straight, except for, usually, the ace).
-The arrangements of the suit cards are fairly standard within the two styles and the Spanish arrangement is different from the Italian.
-The later you go the more pip cards the Spanish deck does away with. While it starts out with 10's it quickly discards those. In some later decks the 9's are also discarded.
The German Style includes:
-A court composed of a king, over, and under. The courts are represented by human figures. The king is typically seated, the over and under stand. The over is designated by the suit sign being at head level or higher. The under is designated by the suit sign being a foot level. There are examples of mounted overs by they are not frequent. There are also examples of decks with a king, mounted knight, over, and under. There are also decks with queens. In fact, you can find just about any court composition in German decks if you look long enough.
-The suits are typically hearts, leaves, bells, and acorns for German decks. Swiss decks typically use shields, leaves, bells, and acorns. HOWEVER, the Germans put just about anything on a deck. Hunting themes were popular but you can find birds, dogs, crowns, the heads of priests, and lots of other items being used for suits. I have counted more than thirty different suits in use in the various examples of German/Swiss decks.
-German style decks typically use a ten with a Roman numeral ten on them (X). Swiss decks typically use a banner displaying the suit symbol for the ten. You can find instances of both in both (i.e. German decks with banner tens and Swiss decks with X tens).
-Neither deck typically uses an ace (1) card.
The French Style includes:
-A court composed of a king, queen, and jack. The courts are represented by human figures, The king may be seated (in earlier decks) or standing (particularly in later decks) and is typically distinguished by a crown and a robe that reaches the floor. The queen may be seated or standing. The jack is typically standing and has short robes.
-The suits are hearts, diamonds, clubs, and spades though the shapes are called differently in French.
-The French suits were adopted by the English and became the standard international deck we know today.
-Some French decks appear to have had a court composed of two kings and two queens and one jack.
-At least one French deck was made with five suits with the fifth suit being a red crescent.
Thursday, December 10, 2015
Self- Publishing Playing Cards
This is really about self-publishing playing cards, but it's easily applied to other works of art and I encourage hobby artists to consider self-publishing their work.
First things first. You aren't going to make a lot of money. You aren't. Unless you're an extremely hard worker, incredibly persistent, and unbelievably lucky. So don't approach this with the expectation that you're going to quit your day job and happily make art all day long because you aren't.
Playing cards are a mass-manufactured item with lots of societal expectations. Modern customers expect the cards to be certain sizes, certain shapes, and to contain certain familiar elements. They want the international standard suits (hearts, diamonds, clubs, spades), they want a King, Queen, and Jack in the court. They want an ace in every suit. They want a joker or two. They want decorated card backs. And so on. There are thousands of different card designs out there and all the truly successful ones cater to these desires. Any deck of cards you produce that doesn't conform to these expectations is losing market share. The more different your deck is, the fewer people who will be interested in purchasing it. Unless it captures the market's attention. This is true even in the medieval recreation market where people should be more concerned with authentic design, appearance, and construction. You have been warned.
Playing cards using standard elements, the ones that cater to the desires of the modern market, are produced in job lots of hundreds of thousands. This reduces the per unit cost of a deck of cards down to fractions of a dollar. A standard deck of bridge size playing cards can cost as little as five cents a deck when ordered in lots of a thousand or more. Which is fortunate because production costs are actually one of the smallest expenses. Once a deck is produced it has to be shipped, stored, marketed, sold, and shipped. On top of that there are the associated costs of running a business.
While it's tempting to say, I'm not running a business, I'm just doing this as a hobby, you can't really do that. To some degree or another you will be running a business. It is possible to minimize your overhead but that comes with associated costs.
I'm going to be very brief here and, despite what you've read above, my intention is to encourage hobby artists, particularly people in the SCA, to look at making some of their work commercially available. Why? Not because you're going to make money, but because it makes your art available to a wider audience. It can be very satisfying to walk by an encampment and see people using your artwork to have fun and enhance the atmosphere of the event. Which is why I focus on doing things for the lowest possible cost.
I'm going to address three basic ways of making cards:
1) By hand using traditional techniques and tools.
2) By hand using modern techniques and tools.
3) Using a commercial print-on-demand service.
Method 1 is practiced by more people than you would think. There's a certain satisfaction that can only be found in hand-carving print blocks, printing on authentic paper, adding color with stencils, and hand cutting the cards. There are tutorials on this process that can be found on the World of Playing Cards website and on YouTube. You should look them up even if you have no intention of ever making cards by hand. A deck of cards produced in this fashion should be priced at $50-$100 per deck. You can also produce hand-painted decks of cards that will be a more accurate representation of the earliest decks and some of the more opulent decks. Decks produced in this fashion should be priced at about $300-$1,000 per deck.
Method 2 uses period techniques (wood-block printing, stenciling) but 'cheats' by using modern tools. You might use a CNC laser or router to produce the wood-block. Or you might use a lino block rather than a low grain seasoned wood. You can laser cut the stencils. Or use modern inks instead of mixing period paints. There are too many possible combinations of choices you can make based on the availability of tools and materials to discuss this at any length. You should be able to reduce the price of a deck produced in this fashion by about 30%.
Method 3 is the method I will discuss at greatest length. This involves creating card designs, uploading them to a commercial print-on-demand service or sending them to a professional printer and producing the cards on demand or in small batches. I will note that if you are producing your cards in small batches it is worth your while to make the small batches a little larger and to introduce a method of keeping track of which cards were produced in which batches. This will help your cards become collectible.
I have used Printer's Studio, Arts Cow, and Make Playing Cards to produce decks of cards. They each have their own advantages and disadvantages but they are all fairly alike in being print on demand companies located in China with no minimum order. You can also print with companies like Bicycle, Cartamundi, and the like, but they will have minimum orders of 500-2000 decks at a time and considerably longer setup times. They also produce better quality cards. But they don't produce medieval cards. What do I mean by that? Let's look at the compromises inherent in using this system.
-Modern playing card stock is very slick and/or has a 'linen' texture applied to it to prevent the cards from sticking together. This is really the biggest issue.
-Modern printers are very reluctant to print right up to the edge of the cards as was the custom up until the 19th Century. You can do it, but the results are inconsistent. Also, be aware that customers are intolerant of manufacturing defects of any sort EVEN IF THEY ARE HISTORICALLY ACCURATE.
-Some manufacturers will simply not sell you a deck without rounded corners. Some will but you have to request it every time you order cards. That makes it hard for people to order decks without assistance and if you have to assist everyone ordering cards then that's costing you money in labor costs. You want to make this as simple and painless and maintenance free as possible.
-You have to choose from standard deck size offerings. MPC offers a lot of options but even they can't match all the sizes medieval playing cards came in. You may have to alter designs to fit available printing formats.
One advantage to using a professional printer is they can do consistent card backs. This is good, sort of. Consistent card backs aren't a big feature of early playing cards. It's why so many decks had plain backs or, in the case of more expensive decks, mono-color backs. Deck backs relied on busy designs so that on average the backs looked mostly the same and individual cards couldn't be distinguished from other cards. So the advantage of getting uniform backs actually detracts from more closely approaching an authentic appearance. As a side note, you may be tempted to make a 'marked' deck of your cards. I don't recommend this. While it would be cool and probably sell a few decks, it will discourage the purchase of your regular version of the deck.
I'm going to go over the way I create a new deck of cards. The first thing I do is the design work. I look at existing examples. I decide what I want to do. I make notes. I make sketches. I get the deck straight in my head. Then I decide what printer to use. For me, I've standardized on Printer's Studio because that allows me sell my designs through their website.
Once the printer has been decided on I download their templates. It's very important to use the printer's templates because if you don't you are going to get inconsistent (BAD) results. Every printer will have a safety area that your file must extend into. Every printer will have a safety area which they recommend you don't print in because imperfections in the cutting process may destroy some of the content there. Finally, every printer will have a design area that will definitely print on every card. I tend to use two free graphic programs: Inkscape and GIMP. GIMP is the free equivalent of PhotoShop while Inkscape is a vector graphics program most easily compared to PowerPoint. I do most of my work on elements of the cards in GIMP and then I import the elements into Inkscape, convert them from raster objects to vector objects and then assemble the cards using these individual elements in Inkscape.
Vector? Raster? Yeah, you'll need to learn some terminology. I'm not going to cover this in any detail. I suggest you look it up. Both of these programs have a learning curve and take some time to learn. I'm not going to teach you how to use them. I will offer you one word that you should research in both programs as understanding the idea and how to use the feature is crucial: Layers. The only thing I have to teach you is setting up the template. Two things to remember: DPI and sizing. Sizing is the physical dimensions of the image. I always make my templates twice as large as the actual cards will be (actually, twice as large as the templates from the printer call for). I do this because I find the printer will condense the image down to fit the card without a loss of detail. In fact, I get finer detail. DPI stands for dots per inch. Simply put the more dots per inch your image has the more detail it will have. You absolutely must have at least 300DPI. 400DPI is better. 600DPI is probably the best your computer can handle unless you've got a high-end machine with lots and lots of RAM (16GB or more).
Instead of teaching you how to do graphic arts on a computer I'm going to assume you've got more artistic talent than me and you created your prototype deck by hand. You're going to take a high resolution picture of each card. When I do this, I use my camera and I have the card lying flat on a mono-color surface with lights on three sides to eliminate shadows. No need for an expensive camera, your typical cell-phone camera will take a great photo. I find cell-phone pictures are better than using a scanner. Unless you've got a really good scanner it's going to have less detail than a cell-phone picture.
Once you've taken 52 pictures you need to take two more. You need a picture of the plain paper the cards are on. You also need a picture of the back of the cards. If you are using a plain back then you only need to take one more photo.
Now you need to construct your cards. You will do this by cropping and sizing your images to fit into the template. REMEMBER, the template includes area around the outside border that will not be printed and area that should be printed and, in the center, area that absolutely will be printed. I like to use the blank paper image as a background layer. Then each card is cropped and centered on the template in a layer above the background layer. When I save this image (in a format the printer will accept, typically a TIFF format) the two layers will be combined exactly as I see them on the screen. That's one card. Repeat this process 51 more times. Make sure to make a last image for the back of the card.
A typical deck will have 54 cards in it. There are reasons for this that I'm not going in to. That leaves you two cards to have fun with. I recommend a joker of some sort. Completely not a Medieval or Renaissance thing. They typically had a Jack or Unter that was clownish rather than a separate Joker. But modern customers like a joker. So have some fun with this. For the second card I recommend advertising. Take some credit for your work. Put a copyright notice on your work. Seriously. Copyright your work. It's your friggin' work and people shouldn't be stealing it. Put a link to your website, your blog, or whatever. Remember, you can use both sides of this card.
The on-demand printers I have mentioned will walk you through the process of uploading cards. You should expect to mess up more than once. If you manage to upload your first deck of cards without having to re-build the deck at least once I will be amazed. And probably hate you. You have been warned.
Once you've successfully uploaded a design it's time to buy a deck to see if you like it. All this work to get a test deck? Yep, and there's more work to be done before you can sell the design on the internet. That's why your decks will sell in the $10-$20 range. They should sell in the $15-$30 range but no one will buy them at that price.
When you get your test deck you will probably find all sorts of things you want to change. Make a list. Put the list away for a week. Come back to it and decide if you really want to make all the changes. Make the changes you really want. Now get another test deck. If that turns out okay you're ready to go. There are a lot of ways to sell your cards online. Some of those ways include:
Etsy. Yes the cards are manufactured by pros but they're using your design. It's good.
Ebay.
Square Marketplace.
Facebook. There are several services that will help you set up a page to take orders through Facebook. Shopify is just one example.
Or you can just spam places where people who want to buy playing cards hang out. Your kingdom list/discussion group? Facebook groups. Whatever. Then you are responsible for fulfilling orders. What is fulfillment? It is taking an order, billing the customer, making sure the money has been received, packaging the order, shipping the order, and confirming the customer has received the order and is happy. This takes time. Time is money. Time spent fulfilling orders is time I can't use to make more art. If I'm not making enough money (defined as being at least as much as I make at the job I work at to pay my bills) fulfilling orders then I don't want to do it. I want someone else to do it.
Right now my best solution for doing this is Printer's Studio. They will allow me to set up a free website, through them, and sell my designs. I can set the amount of profit I want to make per deck, write my own descriptions, do my own advertising, and Printer's Studio will take the orders, bill the customer, and ship the order. Once a quarter, if I've sold enough decks, I get a check (actually a PayPal transfer) from Printer Studio.
It's worth discussing how much I get. I've got, at last count, 12 different decks for sale. I've been selling cards for about three years now. I have made approximately $300 dollars in that time. I have spent easily 300 hours working on these decks. Which means I've made less than a dollar an hour. From a simple economic standpoint I'd have been better off putting in overtime at work. But making money is not the point. I've met some incredible people who share my interest in playing cards. I've printed my own copies of these cards. I've had fun researching, restoring, rescuing, and creating decks of cards. And I've contributed, in a very, very, very, very, very small way to enhancing the atmosphere at some medieval events around the world. That's my profit.
Now, since you've done all this work let's consider what else you can do with your artwork. You can assemble your cards, put them all together as if they were a single printer's sheet and put them on a poster. You can put individual cards on posters or clothing. You can even print them on glasses (which was apparently popular in the 18th Century). How? By going through a print on demand service like Printer's Studio, Zazzle, Spreadshirt, or even Cafe Press (I don't like Cafe Press for reasons that have nothing to do with their quality, selection, or customer service).
This has been, for me, a very long post and it has really only scratched the surface of what's possible. I encourage you to make your artwork available to a larger audience and try to make a little money of it. If you end up making a lot of money you can use that to make more art or you can give it away and make yourself feel better. If you decide on the latter course, email me.
First things first. You aren't going to make a lot of money. You aren't. Unless you're an extremely hard worker, incredibly persistent, and unbelievably lucky. So don't approach this with the expectation that you're going to quit your day job and happily make art all day long because you aren't.
Playing cards are a mass-manufactured item with lots of societal expectations. Modern customers expect the cards to be certain sizes, certain shapes, and to contain certain familiar elements. They want the international standard suits (hearts, diamonds, clubs, spades), they want a King, Queen, and Jack in the court. They want an ace in every suit. They want a joker or two. They want decorated card backs. And so on. There are thousands of different card designs out there and all the truly successful ones cater to these desires. Any deck of cards you produce that doesn't conform to these expectations is losing market share. The more different your deck is, the fewer people who will be interested in purchasing it. Unless it captures the market's attention. This is true even in the medieval recreation market where people should be more concerned with authentic design, appearance, and construction. You have been warned.
Playing cards using standard elements, the ones that cater to the desires of the modern market, are produced in job lots of hundreds of thousands. This reduces the per unit cost of a deck of cards down to fractions of a dollar. A standard deck of bridge size playing cards can cost as little as five cents a deck when ordered in lots of a thousand or more. Which is fortunate because production costs are actually one of the smallest expenses. Once a deck is produced it has to be shipped, stored, marketed, sold, and shipped. On top of that there are the associated costs of running a business.
While it's tempting to say, I'm not running a business, I'm just doing this as a hobby, you can't really do that. To some degree or another you will be running a business. It is possible to minimize your overhead but that comes with associated costs.
I'm going to be very brief here and, despite what you've read above, my intention is to encourage hobby artists, particularly people in the SCA, to look at making some of their work commercially available. Why? Not because you're going to make money, but because it makes your art available to a wider audience. It can be very satisfying to walk by an encampment and see people using your artwork to have fun and enhance the atmosphere of the event. Which is why I focus on doing things for the lowest possible cost.
I'm going to address three basic ways of making cards:
1) By hand using traditional techniques and tools.
2) By hand using modern techniques and tools.
3) Using a commercial print-on-demand service.
Method 1 is practiced by more people than you would think. There's a certain satisfaction that can only be found in hand-carving print blocks, printing on authentic paper, adding color with stencils, and hand cutting the cards. There are tutorials on this process that can be found on the World of Playing Cards website and on YouTube. You should look them up even if you have no intention of ever making cards by hand. A deck of cards produced in this fashion should be priced at $50-$100 per deck. You can also produce hand-painted decks of cards that will be a more accurate representation of the earliest decks and some of the more opulent decks. Decks produced in this fashion should be priced at about $300-$1,000 per deck.
Method 2 uses period techniques (wood-block printing, stenciling) but 'cheats' by using modern tools. You might use a CNC laser or router to produce the wood-block. Or you might use a lino block rather than a low grain seasoned wood. You can laser cut the stencils. Or use modern inks instead of mixing period paints. There are too many possible combinations of choices you can make based on the availability of tools and materials to discuss this at any length. You should be able to reduce the price of a deck produced in this fashion by about 30%.
Method 3 is the method I will discuss at greatest length. This involves creating card designs, uploading them to a commercial print-on-demand service or sending them to a professional printer and producing the cards on demand or in small batches. I will note that if you are producing your cards in small batches it is worth your while to make the small batches a little larger and to introduce a method of keeping track of which cards were produced in which batches. This will help your cards become collectible.
I have used Printer's Studio, Arts Cow, and Make Playing Cards to produce decks of cards. They each have their own advantages and disadvantages but they are all fairly alike in being print on demand companies located in China with no minimum order. You can also print with companies like Bicycle, Cartamundi, and the like, but they will have minimum orders of 500-2000 decks at a time and considerably longer setup times. They also produce better quality cards. But they don't produce medieval cards. What do I mean by that? Let's look at the compromises inherent in using this system.
-Modern playing card stock is very slick and/or has a 'linen' texture applied to it to prevent the cards from sticking together. This is really the biggest issue.
-Modern printers are very reluctant to print right up to the edge of the cards as was the custom up until the 19th Century. You can do it, but the results are inconsistent. Also, be aware that customers are intolerant of manufacturing defects of any sort EVEN IF THEY ARE HISTORICALLY ACCURATE.
-Some manufacturers will simply not sell you a deck without rounded corners. Some will but you have to request it every time you order cards. That makes it hard for people to order decks without assistance and if you have to assist everyone ordering cards then that's costing you money in labor costs. You want to make this as simple and painless and maintenance free as possible.
-You have to choose from standard deck size offerings. MPC offers a lot of options but even they can't match all the sizes medieval playing cards came in. You may have to alter designs to fit available printing formats.
One advantage to using a professional printer is they can do consistent card backs. This is good, sort of. Consistent card backs aren't a big feature of early playing cards. It's why so many decks had plain backs or, in the case of more expensive decks, mono-color backs. Deck backs relied on busy designs so that on average the backs looked mostly the same and individual cards couldn't be distinguished from other cards. So the advantage of getting uniform backs actually detracts from more closely approaching an authentic appearance. As a side note, you may be tempted to make a 'marked' deck of your cards. I don't recommend this. While it would be cool and probably sell a few decks, it will discourage the purchase of your regular version of the deck.
I'm going to go over the way I create a new deck of cards. The first thing I do is the design work. I look at existing examples. I decide what I want to do. I make notes. I make sketches. I get the deck straight in my head. Then I decide what printer to use. For me, I've standardized on Printer's Studio because that allows me sell my designs through their website.
Once the printer has been decided on I download their templates. It's very important to use the printer's templates because if you don't you are going to get inconsistent (BAD) results. Every printer will have a safety area that your file must extend into. Every printer will have a safety area which they recommend you don't print in because imperfections in the cutting process may destroy some of the content there. Finally, every printer will have a design area that will definitely print on every card. I tend to use two free graphic programs: Inkscape and GIMP. GIMP is the free equivalent of PhotoShop while Inkscape is a vector graphics program most easily compared to PowerPoint. I do most of my work on elements of the cards in GIMP and then I import the elements into Inkscape, convert them from raster objects to vector objects and then assemble the cards using these individual elements in Inkscape.
Vector? Raster? Yeah, you'll need to learn some terminology. I'm not going to cover this in any detail. I suggest you look it up. Both of these programs have a learning curve and take some time to learn. I'm not going to teach you how to use them. I will offer you one word that you should research in both programs as understanding the idea and how to use the feature is crucial: Layers. The only thing I have to teach you is setting up the template. Two things to remember: DPI and sizing. Sizing is the physical dimensions of the image. I always make my templates twice as large as the actual cards will be (actually, twice as large as the templates from the printer call for). I do this because I find the printer will condense the image down to fit the card without a loss of detail. In fact, I get finer detail. DPI stands for dots per inch. Simply put the more dots per inch your image has the more detail it will have. You absolutely must have at least 300DPI. 400DPI is better. 600DPI is probably the best your computer can handle unless you've got a high-end machine with lots and lots of RAM (16GB or more).
Instead of teaching you how to do graphic arts on a computer I'm going to assume you've got more artistic talent than me and you created your prototype deck by hand. You're going to take a high resolution picture of each card. When I do this, I use my camera and I have the card lying flat on a mono-color surface with lights on three sides to eliminate shadows. No need for an expensive camera, your typical cell-phone camera will take a great photo. I find cell-phone pictures are better than using a scanner. Unless you've got a really good scanner it's going to have less detail than a cell-phone picture.
Once you've taken 52 pictures you need to take two more. You need a picture of the plain paper the cards are on. You also need a picture of the back of the cards. If you are using a plain back then you only need to take one more photo.
Now you need to construct your cards. You will do this by cropping and sizing your images to fit into the template. REMEMBER, the template includes area around the outside border that will not be printed and area that should be printed and, in the center, area that absolutely will be printed. I like to use the blank paper image as a background layer. Then each card is cropped and centered on the template in a layer above the background layer. When I save this image (in a format the printer will accept, typically a TIFF format) the two layers will be combined exactly as I see them on the screen. That's one card. Repeat this process 51 more times. Make sure to make a last image for the back of the card.
A typical deck will have 54 cards in it. There are reasons for this that I'm not going in to. That leaves you two cards to have fun with. I recommend a joker of some sort. Completely not a Medieval or Renaissance thing. They typically had a Jack or Unter that was clownish rather than a separate Joker. But modern customers like a joker. So have some fun with this. For the second card I recommend advertising. Take some credit for your work. Put a copyright notice on your work. Seriously. Copyright your work. It's your friggin' work and people shouldn't be stealing it. Put a link to your website, your blog, or whatever. Remember, you can use both sides of this card.
The on-demand printers I have mentioned will walk you through the process of uploading cards. You should expect to mess up more than once. If you manage to upload your first deck of cards without having to re-build the deck at least once I will be amazed. And probably hate you. You have been warned.
Once you've successfully uploaded a design it's time to buy a deck to see if you like it. All this work to get a test deck? Yep, and there's more work to be done before you can sell the design on the internet. That's why your decks will sell in the $10-$20 range. They should sell in the $15-$30 range but no one will buy them at that price.
When you get your test deck you will probably find all sorts of things you want to change. Make a list. Put the list away for a week. Come back to it and decide if you really want to make all the changes. Make the changes you really want. Now get another test deck. If that turns out okay you're ready to go. There are a lot of ways to sell your cards online. Some of those ways include:
Etsy. Yes the cards are manufactured by pros but they're using your design. It's good.
Ebay.
Square Marketplace.
Facebook. There are several services that will help you set up a page to take orders through Facebook. Shopify is just one example.
Or you can just spam places where people who want to buy playing cards hang out. Your kingdom list/discussion group? Facebook groups. Whatever. Then you are responsible for fulfilling orders. What is fulfillment? It is taking an order, billing the customer, making sure the money has been received, packaging the order, shipping the order, and confirming the customer has received the order and is happy. This takes time. Time is money. Time spent fulfilling orders is time I can't use to make more art. If I'm not making enough money (defined as being at least as much as I make at the job I work at to pay my bills) fulfilling orders then I don't want to do it. I want someone else to do it.
Right now my best solution for doing this is Printer's Studio. They will allow me to set up a free website, through them, and sell my designs. I can set the amount of profit I want to make per deck, write my own descriptions, do my own advertising, and Printer's Studio will take the orders, bill the customer, and ship the order. Once a quarter, if I've sold enough decks, I get a check (actually a PayPal transfer) from Printer Studio.
It's worth discussing how much I get. I've got, at last count, 12 different decks for sale. I've been selling cards for about three years now. I have made approximately $300 dollars in that time. I have spent easily 300 hours working on these decks. Which means I've made less than a dollar an hour. From a simple economic standpoint I'd have been better off putting in overtime at work. But making money is not the point. I've met some incredible people who share my interest in playing cards. I've printed my own copies of these cards. I've had fun researching, restoring, rescuing, and creating decks of cards. And I've contributed, in a very, very, very, very, very small way to enhancing the atmosphere at some medieval events around the world. That's my profit.
Now, since you've done all this work let's consider what else you can do with your artwork. You can assemble your cards, put them all together as if they were a single printer's sheet and put them on a poster. You can put individual cards on posters or clothing. You can even print them on glasses (which was apparently popular in the 18th Century). How? By going through a print on demand service like Printer's Studio, Zazzle, Spreadshirt, or even Cafe Press (I don't like Cafe Press for reasons that have nothing to do with their quality, selection, or customer service).
This has been, for me, a very long post and it has really only scratched the surface of what's possible. I encourage you to make your artwork available to a larger audience and try to make a little money of it. If you end up making a lot of money you can use that to make more art or you can give it away and make yourself feel better. If you decide on the latter course, email me.
Friday, October 30, 2015
Stuckely Playing Cards
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.
Tuesday, October 13, 2015
At a loss for words
As the title says, I am at a loss for words. I found out a couple of days ago that Will McLean, Galleron de Cresy, was very ill. Yesterday I found out his battle with cancer had taken a turn for the worse and he was home and in hospice care. Well... home and in hospice care AND with plans to go to a local event and portray a convalescent. Probably with the same thoughtfulness and dedication to historical accuracy and inventiveness that he brought to pretty much everything I saw him do.
Not that I ever got to see him in person. Not that I'm aware of. I knew of him through the internet. He introduced me to the idea of commonplace books. To the ideas behind the forms of tournament combat. To the fun of historical recreation. And I know he had similar, and greater, effects on many other people.
The saying is that a man's not gone while people still speak his name. Will McLean will be around for a very long time. God keep him and comfort his.
Not that I ever got to see him in person. Not that I'm aware of. I knew of him through the internet. He introduced me to the idea of commonplace books. To the ideas behind the forms of tournament combat. To the fun of historical recreation. And I know he had similar, and greater, effects on many other people.
The saying is that a man's not gone while people still speak his name. Will McLean will be around for a very long time. God keep him and comfort his.
Tuesday, August 18, 2015
Playing Cards - Swiss and German
I started researching playing cards because I wanted some cards that were appropriate for late 14th Century Spain and I particularly wanted to have cards that were appropriate for both Christian and Muslim Spain. That led me to the Mamluk deck held by the Topkapi museum in Istanbul which led me to... Switzerland?
Pretty much. I'm fond of saying that you can learn a lot about something by looking at its shadow and in this case that meant broadening my search to move away from Islamic/Spanish playing cards to Medieval/Renaissance playing cards in general. Which turned up this:
These are part of a 16th Century deck from Basel. You can find variation on this design from the 15th to the 18th Centuries and they've been reprinted in the 20th and 21st Centuries. And once I started trying to understand this deck I was lost. You see, the Swiss and the Germans took to playing cards with a zeal that doesn't border on ferocious because ferocious is so far back in the rearview mirror you couldn't see it from the top of a very high peak. I've counted over 27 different suits used in Swiss/German cards from the 15th to 17th Centuries and I'm positive I haven't found them all. The study of playing cards really is something of a rabbit hole.
This deck was unique in that it was complete. That's a rare thing to find. There can't be more than ten decks from before the 17th Century that are complete. There are a lot of partial decks (and partial cards, for that matter) but none are complete. And the imagery of this deck appealed to me. Probably because it's very simple in comparison to some of the other decks. So I decided to make some.
Early experiments were interesting. I quickly determined that hand drawing these cards was not going to work for me. Almost as quickly I determined that making these cards on authentic paper, with proper paints was a) beyond my artistic skills and b) going to be very expensive. That wasn't good. I wanted to make a little money at this, yes, but I also wanted a bunch of people to be able to use these cards.
In Image 3 and Image 4 you can see some cards I made in a compromise technique. I printed the designs onto 150gsm paper (a cardstock) and then glued the printed sheet to a backing sheet to make a 300gsm sheet of cards that I then cut out by hand. All I can see here are the failures. The unter/under/jack of bells in Image 3 clearly shows the cards are too large in relation to the artwork. In Image 1 we can see the artwork nearly fills the entire card and in other surviving decks/cards we can see the artwork is sometimes cut off because it was so close to the edge. These cards were way too thick. I think. We don't have a lot of information on how thick the cards actually were, but I think these are way too thick. They're also black and white. If you see a surviving deck in black and white that's because it was a printer's reject sheet that was recycled for something else. Cards were colored. By hand, by stencil, by whatever method. But they were colored.
Ultimately I decided to go with a professional printing service. I chose a print on demand service because I had no money to pay for a small print run (500 decks). That drove up the cost of each deck but kept the price fairly low and allowed me to ensure the cards remained available without having to do another print run if I ran out of cards from the first run (ha!). After experimenting I ended up choosing Printer's Studio and got my first set of cards.
I like the way the cards turned out, but everything about them is a problem. The colors are perceived by customers as being too bright. I'll admit the palette could benefit from some tweaking to more closely approximate surviving examples, but indications are that Medieval painting *was* quite bright. The cards are too white for a lot of people; they don't convey that 'olde tyme' feeling that sepia-toned paper does. Again, Medieval paper was frequently coated with a mixture of starch (binder) and chalk (pigment) to make it whiter and smoother. Frankly, Medieval paper was frequently of a higher quality than the wood pulp stuff we commonly use now. The margins around the artwork were unavoidable. Modern printers simply won't accept the losses that Medieval printers were willing to accept and they demand quite a large margin around the artwork. The rounded corners are, in my mind, even worse. Medieval playing cards had square corners. This deck has a patterned back. That's one of the benefits of using a professional printing service. I could never have done uniform backs on my own.
In Image 6 you can see 10 of the almost 30 suits I put together from documented examples. Well.... almost. When I made the swords and coins I thought I was being.... creative. You see, swords and coins are part of the Latin-style card decks and aren't Swiss/German at all. Except they turned out to be Swiss/Italian and very well documented. I've changed the designs and the layout to more accurately reflect the historical examples and added cups and batons/staves as well. To the right you can see some examples of card backs that I experimented with.
So what are you seeing? The Swiss/German deck layout typically has pip cards (the number cards) from 2 to 9. There is no one/1/ace. In the Swiss influenced decks the ten is typically a banner bearing the suit symbol and an X serving as a Roman numeral ten. In the German influenced decks the ten is generally another pip card (ten suit symbols) with a Roman number ten somewhere on the card (typically the middle of the card or the top of the card). The ten in both decks frequently serves the same purpose as the ace in modern decks. In the example above you can see modern style aces. I added those to make the deck more flexible; you can set them aside to play period games or include them to play modern games. The court cards are an unter/under, ober/over, and konig/king. The unter is the equivalent of the jack and he is the under because the suit symbol is low on his card. The ober is the equivalent of the queen and his the over because the suit symobl is high on his card. The king is seated upon a throne and wears a crown. He also wears a long robe which is a detail that becomes important when dealing with the French decks.
Pretty much. I'm fond of saying that you can learn a lot about something by looking at its shadow and in this case that meant broadening my search to move away from Islamic/Spanish playing cards to Medieval/Renaissance playing cards in general. Which turned up this:
Image 1
Image 2
Image 2
These are part of a 16th Century deck from Basel. You can find variation on this design from the 15th to the 18th Centuries and they've been reprinted in the 20th and 21st Centuries. And once I started trying to understand this deck I was lost. You see, the Swiss and the Germans took to playing cards with a zeal that doesn't border on ferocious because ferocious is so far back in the rearview mirror you couldn't see it from the top of a very high peak. I've counted over 27 different suits used in Swiss/German cards from the 15th to 17th Centuries and I'm positive I haven't found them all. The study of playing cards really is something of a rabbit hole.
This deck was unique in that it was complete. That's a rare thing to find. There can't be more than ten decks from before the 17th Century that are complete. There are a lot of partial decks (and partial cards, for that matter) but none are complete. And the imagery of this deck appealed to me. Probably because it's very simple in comparison to some of the other decks. So I decided to make some.
Early experiments were interesting. I quickly determined that hand drawing these cards was not going to work for me. Almost as quickly I determined that making these cards on authentic paper, with proper paints was a) beyond my artistic skills and b) going to be very expensive. That wasn't good. I wanted to make a little money at this, yes, but I also wanted a bunch of people to be able to use these cards.
Image 3
Image 4
In Image 3 and Image 4 you can see some cards I made in a compromise technique. I printed the designs onto 150gsm paper (a cardstock) and then glued the printed sheet to a backing sheet to make a 300gsm sheet of cards that I then cut out by hand. All I can see here are the failures. The unter/under/jack of bells in Image 3 clearly shows the cards are too large in relation to the artwork. In Image 1 we can see the artwork nearly fills the entire card and in other surviving decks/cards we can see the artwork is sometimes cut off because it was so close to the edge. These cards were way too thick. I think. We don't have a lot of information on how thick the cards actually were, but I think these are way too thick. They're also black and white. If you see a surviving deck in black and white that's because it was a printer's reject sheet that was recycled for something else. Cards were colored. By hand, by stencil, by whatever method. But they were colored.
Ultimately I decided to go with a professional printing service. I chose a print on demand service because I had no money to pay for a small print run (500 decks). That drove up the cost of each deck but kept the price fairly low and allowed me to ensure the cards remained available without having to do another print run if I ran out of cards from the first run (ha!). After experimenting I ended up choosing Printer's Studio and got my first set of cards.
Image 5
I like the way the cards turned out, but everything about them is a problem. The colors are perceived by customers as being too bright. I'll admit the palette could benefit from some tweaking to more closely approximate surviving examples, but indications are that Medieval painting *was* quite bright. The cards are too white for a lot of people; they don't convey that 'olde tyme' feeling that sepia-toned paper does. Again, Medieval paper was frequently coated with a mixture of starch (binder) and chalk (pigment) to make it whiter and smoother. Frankly, Medieval paper was frequently of a higher quality than the wood pulp stuff we commonly use now. The margins around the artwork were unavoidable. Modern printers simply won't accept the losses that Medieval printers were willing to accept and they demand quite a large margin around the artwork. The rounded corners are, in my mind, even worse. Medieval playing cards had square corners. This deck has a patterned back. That's one of the benefits of using a professional printing service. I could never have done uniform backs on my own.
Image 6
In Image 6 you can see 10 of the almost 30 suits I put together from documented examples. Well.... almost. When I made the swords and coins I thought I was being.... creative. You see, swords and coins are part of the Latin-style card decks and aren't Swiss/German at all. Except they turned out to be Swiss/Italian and very well documented. I've changed the designs and the layout to more accurately reflect the historical examples and added cups and batons/staves as well. To the right you can see some examples of card backs that I experimented with.
So what are you seeing? The Swiss/German deck layout typically has pip cards (the number cards) from 2 to 9. There is no one/1/ace. In the Swiss influenced decks the ten is typically a banner bearing the suit symbol and an X serving as a Roman numeral ten. In the German influenced decks the ten is generally another pip card (ten suit symbols) with a Roman number ten somewhere on the card (typically the middle of the card or the top of the card). The ten in both decks frequently serves the same purpose as the ace in modern decks. In the example above you can see modern style aces. I added those to make the deck more flexible; you can set them aside to play period games or include them to play modern games. The court cards are an unter/under, ober/over, and konig/king. The unter is the equivalent of the jack and he is the under because the suit symbol is low on his card. The ober is the equivalent of the queen and his the over because the suit symobl is high on his card. The king is seated upon a throne and wears a crown. He also wears a long robe which is a detail that becomes important when dealing with the French decks.
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