Caldwell, Ross Gregory. MacPherson, Hugh. Wilkinson, W. It may even decrease your chances of burn-out and depression. Games distract your mind and allow your brain the rest it so desperately needs. Playing cards and board games creates strong bonds among friends and families. Discover why exactly playing is so important. Cardistry is the non-magical manipulation of playing cards to display creativity, performance art, and skill. Learn a short history of magic and find more information on this fascinating and entertaining art.
Somewhere in Southwestern Germany during the 15th century, the first playing card artist created his masterworks. Club Login Log in to Club Rewards using the email and password you provided when you signed up. Signup Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit. A History of Playing Cards. Sources: Caldwell, Ross Gregory.
In the manuscript dated , our German monk friend Johannes from Switzerland mentions the appearance of playing cards and several different card games that could be played with them.
In the s playing cards often appear along with dice games in religious sermons as examples of gambling activities that are denounced, and there is clear evidence that a 52 card deck existed and was used in this time.
The suit signs in the first European decks of the 14th century were swords, clubs, cups, and coins, and very likely had their origin in Italy, although some connect these with the cups, coins, swords, and polo-sticks found on Egyptian playing cards from the Mamluk period. At any rate these are still the four suits still found in Italian and Spanish playing cards today, and are sometimes referred to as the Latin suits.
The court cards from the late 14th century decks in Italy typically included a mounted king, a seated and crowned queen, plus a knave. The knave is a royal servant, although the character could also represent a "prince", and would later be called a Jack to avoid confusion with the King. Spanish cards developed somewhat differently, the court cards being a king, knight, and knave, with no queens. The Spanish packs also didn't have a 10, and with the absence of 8s and 9s in the national Spanish game of ombre , it resulted in a 40 card deck.
The first playing cards in European Italy were hand-painted and beautiful luxury items found only among the upper classes. But as card playing became more popular, and methods were developed to produce them more cheaply, playing cards became more widely available.
It was only natural that this new product eventually spread west and north, and the next major development occurred as a result of their reception in Germany, and one historian has described their rapid spread as "an invasion of playing cards", with soldiers also assisting their movement. To establish themselves as a card-manufacturing nation in their own right, the Germans introduced their own suits to replace the Italian ones, and these new suits reflected their interest in rural life: acorns, leaves, hearts, and bells; the latter being hawk-bells and a reference to the popular rural pursuit of falconry.
The queen was also eliminated from the Italian courts, and these instead consisted of a King and two knaves, an obermann upper and untermann under. Meanwhile the Two replaced the Ace as the highest card, to create a 48 card deck. Custom decks abounded, and suit symbols used in the novelty playing cards from this era include animals, kitchen utensils, and appliances, from frying pans to printers' inkpads!
The standard German suits of acorns, leaves, hearts, and bells were predominant, however, although in nearby Switzerland it was common to see a variation using flowers instead of leaves, and shields instead of hearts.
The Germanic suits are still used in parts of Europe today, and are indebted to this period of history. But the real contribution of Germany was their methods of printing playing cards. Using techniques of wood-cutting and engraving in wood and copper that were developed as a result of the demand for holy pictures and icons, printers were able to produce playing cards in larger quantities.
This led to Germany gaining a dominant role in the playing card trade, even exporting decks to Western Europe, which had produced them in the first place! Eventually the new suit symbols adopted by Germany became even more common throughout Europe than the original Italian ones. Meanwhile early in the 15th century, the French developed the icons for the four suits that we commonly use today, namely hearts, spades, diamonds, and clubs, although they were called coeurs, piques, carreaux, and trefles respectively.
It is possible that the clubs trefles derive from the acorns and the spades pikes from the leaves of the German playing cards, but they may also have been developed independently. The French also preferred a king, queen, and knave as their court cards. But the real stroke of genius that the French came up with was to divide the four suits into two red and two black, with simplified and clearer symbols. This meant that playing cards could be produced with stencils, a hundred times more quickly than using the traditional techniques of wood-cutting and engraving.
With improved processes in manufacturing paper, and the development of better printing processes, including Gutenberg's printing press , the slower and more costly traditional woodcut techniques previously done by hand were replaced with a much more efficient production. For sheer practical reasons, the Germans lost their earlier dominance in the playing card market, as the French decks and their suits spread all over Europe, giving us the designs as we know them today. One interesting feature of the French dominance of playing cards in this time is the attention given to court cards.
In the late s French manufacturers began giving the court cards names from famous literary epics such as the Bible and other classics. It is from this era that the custom developed of associating specific court cards with famous names, the more well-known and commonly accepted ones for the Kings being King David Spades , Alexander the Great Clubs , Charlemagne Hearts , and Julius Caesar Diamonds , representing the four empires of Jews, Greeks, Franks, and Romans.
The common postures, clothing, and accessories that we expect in a modern deck of playing cards today find their roots in characters like these, but we cannot be certain how these details originated, since there was much diversity of clothing, weapons, and accessories depicted in the French decks of this time.
But eventually standardization began to happen, and this was accelerated in the s when taxing on playing cards was introduced. With France divided into nine regions for this purpose, manufacturers within each region were ordered to use a standardized design unique to their region. But it was only when playing cards emigrated to England that a common design really began to dominate the playing card industry.
Our journey across the channel actually begins in Belgium, from where massive quantities of cards began to be exported to England, although soldiers from France may also have helped introduce playing cards to England. Due to heavy taxes in France, some influential card makers emigrated to Belgium, and several card factories and workshops began to appear there. Rouen in particular was an important center of the printing trade. Thousands of decks of Belgian made playing cards were exported to countries throughout Europe, including England.
In view of this, it is no surprise that English card players have virtually always been using the French designs. But playing cards did not pass through Europe without the English leaving their stamp on them. To begin with, they opted to use the names hearts, spades, diamonds, and clubs to refer to the suits that the French had designated as coeurs, piques, carreaux, and trefles.
We do not know why, but they based two of the suit names spades and clubs on the names of the Italian deck rather than directly translate the French terms piques pikes and trefles clovers ; one possible explanation is the Spanish suits were exported to England before French ones. The word diamond is also somewhat unexpected, given that the English word for carreau wax-painted tiles used in churches at the time was lozenge. Whatever the reasons, it is to usage in England that we owe the names that we use for the suits today.
Birds and the bees. They reached Europe around , not directly from China but from the Mameluke empire of Egypt.
The history of suitmarks demonstrates a fascinating interplay between words, shapes and concepts. The Mameluke suits were goblets, gold coins, swords, and polo-sticks.
Polo being then unknown in Europe, these were transformed into batons or staves, which, together with swords, cups and coins, are still the traditional suitmarks of Italian and Spanish cards. Fifteenth-century German card-makers experimented with suits vaguely based on Italian ones, eventually settling for acorns, leaves, hearts and bells hawk-bells , which still remain in use.
Around the French started producing playing-cards by means of stencils, and simplified the German shapes into trefle clover , pique pike-heads , coeur hearts , and carreau paving tiles.
English card-makers used these shapes but varied the names.
0コメント