[Leipzig playing cards].
| Format: | Photo |
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| Language: | German |
| Published: |
Leipzig :
[publisher not identified],
1577.
|
| Subjects: |
| Item Description: | Title devised by cataloger. "Though they are now so rare that nearly-complete sets are found in only a handful of institutions worldwide, German playing cards like this selection were once extremely popular and created in mass quantities. Widely produced in printing centers such as Nürnberg and Ausburg as early as the fourteenth century, German cards were exported to a number of other countries, shipped in bales or hogsheads. Yet they are seldom found today; like other ephemeral printed objects, cards tended to be used until damaged or discarded. Though the earliest examples of such cards were hand-painted or stenciled in small runs, the popular demand for them led to a process of mass production. The Leipzig cards in this collection were relief printed from woodcuts, then stencil-colored in an assortment of four hues: red, ochre, brown, and green. They have been cut down from large printed sheets containing multiple images, then carefully shaped into single cards with rounded corners. Most examples include two sheets which have been laminated together to stiffen the cards. In many cases, the paper seems to have originated as printers' waste; behind the image it is possible to see nearly-legible printed text, as light as a smoke proof. The paper may originally have been used as offset sheets by the printers before being recycled as playing cards. The design of German cards is different from modern playing cards, which were drawn from the French model. In the German deck, the ace was abandoned, leaving the two (or daus) as the high card. As can be seen from these examples, the suits are hearts (herzen), leaves (grün or laub), acorns (eicheln), and bells (Schellen). Like the Italian and French styles, these were thought to represent class divisions, with the hawk bells suggesting the nobility (through their association with falconry); hearts linked with the clergy; leaves for the middle classes or citizenry; and acorns for the peasantry. The court cards were also distinct; rather than including a queen, the German model includes a king and two members of the court who wait upon him, who are known as the obermann and the untermann. These are depicted variously as princes or men-at-arms, but the terms are sometimes translated as "upper and lower valet" or "knave." The account of the discovery of this cache of playing cards is as remarkable as the collection itself. Howard Rootenberg, a book dealer who specializes in medical and scientific works, had purchased a three-volume set of Galen's Opera published in Basel in 1561. Because of wear to the covers, Rootenberg sent the volumes out for a complete rebinding. After the boards were removed from the text blocks, the binder made a curious discovery: eighty-nine printed playing cards (as well as some fragments), which had been inserted into the bindings. Though there are numerous examples of printers' waste being used to strengthen bindings or stiffen boards, these instances nearly always include complete sheets which had been rejected and recycled, not finished cards such as these. (The amount of labor which would have been required to laminate, cut, and shape the cards makes their use in this manner surprising.) Had not the binder performed the almost-archeological process of dismantling the structure of the book, these cards would have remained lost like the overwhelming majority of these popular yet elusive examples of printing history. Because they illustrate early printing techniques used in a mass-market format which has rarely survived to the present (especially in such condition and numbers), and because several are dated and initialed, these playing cards represent research opportunities in exploring the processes and participants of the early decades of popular printing." -- P. 25-26, "A legacy of letters" exhibition catalog, published: [College Station, Tex.] : Cushing Memorial Library & Archives, Texas A&M University Libraries, 2012. Game. |
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| Physical Description: | 1 deck of 89 playing cards : color ; 76 x 45 mm. + fragments. |