Renaissance Playing Cards

©1992 Lyndon Joslin
Published by Full Deck Imagery

The court cards in this deck are based on those found in a deck made in Rouen, France, c. 1567, by Pierre Marechal, cardmaker. (His name appears on the banner across the bottom of the Jack of Clubs in the original deck.) The two exceptions are the Jack of Hearts and the Jack of Diamonds; both are missing from the existing copy of the Marechal deck. The red jacks in this deck are instead based on those from another Rouen deck, c. 1490-1500, by a cardmaker named Valery.

French cardmakers of the 15th and 16th centuries simplified the tarot suits of coins, cups, swords, and wands into the red suits of "carreux" (floor tiles, or diamonds) and "couers" (hearts), and the black suits of "piques" (pikes, spearheads, or spades) and "trefles" (trefoils, cloverleaves, or clubs). For purposes of divination, these suits may have represented wealth, spirituality, arms, and agriculture, respectively. In any case, by simplifying the suits, and by rejecting .such complex Continental suits as monkeys, parrots, and peacocks, the French cardmakers could produce the "pip" cards (the bulk of the deck) by the quick, economical means of stenciling, instead of woodcut printing the entire deck, as was done with the more expensive tarot decks. More affordable and easier to read, French playing cards were popular internationally in the 15th and 16th centuries, with large quantities exported to England and the Low Countries.

The French playing cards of this period were among the immediate antecedents of the familiar playing cards in use today. The court cards had by this time been standardized into the King, Queen, and Jack (or Knave) of each suit, dispensing with the Knight of earlier decks. (Other international variations included the Spanish court of a King, a Knight, and a Knave; the Queen was excluded because a card game was no place for a lady.) Traditionally, the court cards were identified with historical or legendary personalities. Though the practice of labeling the cards with the names of these characters was on the way out by the time of the Herschel deck, modern French decks have revived this custom.

The present deck reproduces a deck of its period in several other particulars: full-length, single-headed court cards (double-headed court cards were introduced early in the 19th century); "pips" which all face the same direction; square corners; lack of a corner index; and the absence of a joker. Jokers, round corners, and corner indexes were 19th-century innovations. For your convenience, I have added a Roman-numeral index to the pip cards, a not uncommon feature of period tarot decks. The aces of certain period decks featured Latin mottos; DEO NON FORTUNA, on the Ace of Spades, means "By God, not by chance". I figured this was a suitably ironic phrase to include in a game of chance.

This deck, copyright 1992 by Lyndon Joslin, is a fully functional deck suited to modern gaming. Enjoy!