Just like the "Joker of the Month" in the Jokers section we will select a "Deck of the Month" from all the decks that we could add to our collection during that month. It will be what we consider our best find. We've started this section in April 2007 and without any doubt we can say here that over the years there will be antique, vintage and modern decks shown on these pages. Age, design and value of the chosen decks may be very different each time.

August 2025

This month I've kept it simple. There were no packages nor did I visit any markets or meetings. In short, no new decks.		So I simply chose a nice earlier acquisition. One with a simplified and modern design, but a rare deck, which is over 80 years old.

I thought I could keep it short and just repeat the description, which I wrote for the speelkaartenmuseum.nl site. That the deck of 52 cards and 1 joker was published in 1942 by the Vereniging voor Kunstnijverheid, but which was -as research now showed-  in fact called Instituut voor Kunstnijverheidsonderwijs (institute for the education in applied arts) in Amsterdam. The initials IvKNO are on each back and the box, together with the name of the artist. Apparently Lidia Schöffer had won a design contest at the school and a printed version probably was the winner's price. The deck was lithographically printed by NV Drukkerij v.h. Dieperink & Co. from Amsterdam. Paul Symons found the K 187 number on the flap of the box and the accompanying name of the printer. Due to the scarcity of paper during WWII the German occupier gave every known print shop a K number. Nowadays there's a complete list of these K-numbers in .pdf and for most printed matter from that era (1941/42 - 1947) a name of the printer can be found there. For so far the description on the Dutch site and I could have stopped here.

But I decided to see if I could find out a little bit more about the artist and a fascinating history was unfolded. Even though I'm not a genealogist and only had one day, I found that her full name was Lidia Elisabeth Schöffer and she was born on December 19, 1918. Her parents, Conrad Schöffer and Sara Schöffer-Burger, were well-off and since 1923 they lived in the Hacquartstraat 6 in Amsterdam. They raised Lidia and her brothers Peter and Ivo with a strong sense of justice and in 1940 the family began helping Jewish families who were struggling under the German occupation. Not much later they started helping Jewish families to hide from the authorities in different houses spread over the city in Amsterdam and the family became part of the resistance movement against the German occupiers. Ivo, still studying, hid many different people in the building of his dispute. But especially Lidia and Peter became active. Lidia, with her graphic background, helped him falsifying identification papers. Although once arrested for a minor offence, Lidia survived the war. There's little known about her post-war life. In 1948 she married N.A. Stigter in New York, but apparently returned to Amsterdam with her family on January 16, 1950. She died on September 3, 1980. To see some pictures of her and her family, click HERE.
In 2021 the Dutch historian Gerben Post published a book about the family, which was titled "Schöffer & Co" and has "familiebedrijf in verzetszaken" (family-business in matters of resistance) as subtitle. On the cover there's an old photo of 5 youngsters around a table, busy writing and fiddling with papers. One of the two women must be Lidia.

Now some words about the deck, finally.