Prophetical, Educational and Playing Cards

by Mrs. John King Van Rensselaer

These old figures and the cards that followed them are not classed under the head of games or Playing Cards, so students wishing to examine examples of early European Playing Cards must seek the print rooms of the British Museum, or the Nuremburg Museum, and the national libraries of Vienna, Bologna, and Paris.

Since among the first productions of the graver’s tools were gambling cards, Mr. Singer and others have studied the games for which so much time and labour were devoted. “It is evident,” he says, “that since the earliest specimens of engraving on steel and on copper both in Italy and Germany are cards, there must have been a great demand for them, and that their cheap production was eagerly seized upon by the card makers, who through it considerably shortened their labours and increased their output, so from this moment games with cards rapidly spread over Europe,” while the Book of Thoth was abandoned to gypsies and fortune-tellers.

The cards painted under Grigoneur for the French king, and now in Les Cabinet des Estampes, Paris, are probably the oldest extant, and are about contemporary with the Italian packs in Bologna and those in Mr. Morgan’s collection, that are painted, but not engraved.

A pack in the British Museum goes by the name of Doctor Stukley’s cards, for he was the first to exhibit them. They are stencilled and have German pips. There is no Queen among the court cards, but her place is taken by a male figure called Ober, accompanied by a King and Unter. There are no Aces, so the cards were probably intended for the popular game of Sixty-six. These cards were rudely printed and coloured with stencils. They were first shown to the society of Antiquarians, London, November 9, 1763, and have been frequently exhibited and discussed. They were found in the binding of an old book, supposed to be Claudian, printed before 1500, and to these we owe a debt of gratitude for exciting an interest in Playing Cards, to which much of their history is due. The supposition that the German pips were used in England before the French cards were introduced is sustained only by finding this solitary pack. The book itself was not printed in England, while the name assigned to the suit of Spades is clearly derived from the Spanish Espadas, which points to the probability of the Swords, Rods, Cups, and Money pips having been known in England. The Trèfle of France was called a Club, as had probably been done with the Rod suit of the old cards.

A nearly complete pack bearing these designs and almost facsimiles of the Stukley pack is in the Historical Society of New York.

Among the earliest specimens of ornamental engraved cards are some that were executed at Cologne, the different cards of which are so widely separated that the complete pack can nowhere be found. Solitary examples are scattered in different museums, where they are treasured as beautiful representations of “the master’s” art, although no person knows his name. The wrapper of these cards has been found, and on it is a well-executed design of three ornamental crowns, placed inside of Gothic arches, that are connected by a gracefully twisted ribbon on which is the inscription “Salve Felix Colonia” which is the only remaining clue to the engraver, the date of execution, and the birthplace of the pack.

In it are five suits instead of four, and these have original emblems that, however, never seem to have been popular or intended for gambling, or even for divination, but they were probably the invention of the artist, who had little idea of the significance of the original emblems of Cups, Swords, Staves, and Money, for not only was a fifth and unprofitable suit added to the pack, but the pips were changed to artistic designs that may delight the senses of the connoisseurs, but fail to appeal to a card player, since the designer was evidently not as clever as the Frenchmen, who invented a new set of emblems for their royal master, and through constructing the game Piquet, that could only be played with these cards, clinched their adoption by players. The five suits of these German cards were Hares, Parrots, Pinks, Roses, and Columbines, with four court cards to each suit, and they are illustrated in “Playing Cards,” by Mr. Singer (page 47), and are attributed by him to Martin Schoen, or Schongaur. “The costume of the figures,” he says, “belongs to the fifteenth century, and seems conclusively to establish the fact.” To this statement other authorities do not agree.

One of the earliest examples of Playing Cards executed on copper was produced in Germany before 1446. The artist is known only by his initials, and is called “The Master E. S.” His cards are original and finely executed, although his emblems stray as far from the ancient ones peculiar to Mercury as the games to be played with them differ from divination. The devices are Roses, Cyclamen, Savages, Birds, Stags, and Lions. This “Master E. S.” seems to have copied most of his designs for a smaller set of cards, and he also executed a pack that had Shields, Flowers, Animals, and Helmets for pips. These are artistically grouped, and the escutcheons display coats-of-arms of the nobility that go far to establish the date of those that are not marked. But the pips, although they were gracefully marshaled, were troublesome and confusing to the players, which has caused these cards to be chiefly valued as examples of the graver’s art, lacking the simplicity of the French pips, with their harmonious red and black colours, these peculiar designs failed to revolutionise the Playing Cards in common use, as had evidently been the intention of “The Master.”

The little that is known of “E. S.” points to his having been the immediate predecessor of Martin Schongaur, of Colmar, who was the unrivalled engraver of his time, and has been described as the Van Eyck of engraving. He was “the actual creator of the art as practiced in modern times,” says Max Lehrs in his essay on the Playing Cards engraved by this master. “To him we owe the technical method of producing the appearance of relief and solidity on a flat surface by the combination of a number of parallel lines on transverse lines, which effect had only been obtainable before his invention by the addition of colour to the finished prints.” His home was probably in the vicinity of Freiburg, or Breisach, and it is supposed that he died in 1467.

The cards attributed to “E. S.” are scattered over Europe, but they seem to be universally acknowledged as the first specimens of engraved Playing Cards. The dainty pictures served as models to the students of the Master, and have often been copied or adopted as accessories to other pictures. The Four of Men and the Ober Knave of the same suit, the Four of Dogs, and the Three of Birds were used to adorn the cover of a Bible that is now in the University Library of Erlangen. These designs were also used in the tooling of other books.