Playing cards who invented

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View all Vanishing Inc. The Session, London:. Magifest, Ohio:. The Retreat, South Africa:. 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. The English government passed an Act that cards could not leave the factory until they had proof that the required tax on playing cards had been paid.

This initially involved hand stamping the Ace of Spades - probably because it was the top card. Thus, European playing cards appear to have an Islamic derivation. Some of the earliest surviving packs were hand painted works of art which were expensive and affordable only by wealthy patrons such as dukes or emperors. But you can play card games with any old pack so as demand increased new, cheaper methods of production were discovered so that playing cards became available for everyone The history of playing cards in popular art is fascinating and has a long tradition.

As the Spanish adopted playing cards, they replaced queens with mounted knights or caballeros. The ace rose to prominence in , according to the IPCS. That was the year England began to tax sales of playing cards. The ace was stamped to indicate that the tax had been paid, and forging an ace was a crime punishable by death. To this day, the ace is boldly designed to stand out. The king of hearts offers another curiosity: The only king without a mustache, he appears to be killing himself by means of a sword to the head.

As printing spurred rapid reproduction of decks, the integrity of the original artwork declined. When printing blocks wore out, Bostock explained, card makers would create new sets by copying either the blocks or the cards.

This process amplified previous errors. Hand craftsmanship and high taxation made each deck of playing cards an investment. As such, cards became a feast for the eye. Fanciful, highly specialized decks offered artists a chance to design a kind of collectible, visual essay. Playing-card manufacturers produced decks meant for other uses beyond simple card playing, including instruction, propaganda, and advertising.