Not Sweating the Small Stuff

Playing Cards over Time and Place

I began looking at images of old playing cards and realized it's a mania as powerful as stamp collecting.

Playing cards probably developed in China, along with the invention of paper and with other ‘suit’ games like Mah Jong and dominoes. One of the earliest references to cards in China was in the Tsin dynasty when T'ao K'an (259-334 AD) was reported by a local chronicler to have "flung into the river the wine cups and yü-p'u [Chinese cards] of his subordinates, remarking, 'Yü-p'u is a game for drovers, and swineherds' ".

Early Chinese Playing Cards

But the first reference in Europe was in 1377 – where the suits of cups and swords were added to those of coins and strings of coins adapted, in Chinese cards, from the circles and bamboos taken from Mah Jong. Non-figurative court cards were added on the journey to the west through the Islamic Empire. To be replaced by figurative cards of kings and their attendants of knights on horseback and foot-servants. Queens still do not appear in the card sets of many European countries, such as Spain. And Switzerland retains, from early German cards, the banner for the tens.

As well as the traditional designs ...

Traditional Designs - James Hardy, London (1827)

... there are lots of interesting variations, according to time and place, for example ...

Islamic (C15) - King of Coins and 5 of Sticks or Bamboos

French Court Cards - Kings (c1500)

Revolution Playing Cards (c.1689)

Morden's Playing Cards (1676)

Astronomisches Kartenspiel - German Astronomical Cards (1719)

King, England (1805)

Hall & Son playing cards, England (1806-10)

J.G. Cotta (1805)

German publisher J.G. Cotta, active in Tübingen (early 1800's)

Various German Cards (from 1825 to 1868)

G.Payer (c.1850)

Shakespeare' Goodall and Son London (1893)

F. Piatnik & Söhne, Wien 1895

Netherlands (1920)

'Vanity Fare' Set (1920's)

Sumio Kawakami's woodblock prints, by Okuno Karuta, Japan (1939)

Concentration Camp Deck, Dachau (1945)

And what post would be complete without some examples of those fag nude cards of the 1960's and 1970's ...


... which I reckon are great for the guys' hair as much as anything else!