August 2013
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This month
we both had a laid-back attitude. There were enough outside flea markets
and car-booth sales, but we only did two of them. The garden was a much
more relaxed place to spend the mornings...... and afternoons. So for
our new decks we had to rely on the online auctions again. And again the
Dutch auction site didn't have any interesting decks to offer, so this
month Ebay had to provide us with some ammo for this xpo. The short list
was short and we didn't have much trouble finding our new Deck of the
Month. There was a deck from the Fournier b/w "souvenir"
series, published between 1957 and 1962, which left us with one to go to
complete it. And there was a nice advertising deck by Carta Mundi. |
CLICK TO SEE |
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Card of the Month |
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But we would like to use this opportunity to present you a "mystery" deck
again and ask our
visitors for their help. |
It's always nice if we can tell you something worthwhile about our Deck of
the Month, but this time we can only describe what we (and you) can see. We
bought the deck from an experienced Dutch playing cards seller, but even he had
never seen this deck before. As there was neither a box nor an explicative card,
we have nothing to go by, except the present cards. But we found the
designs somewhat special, with some strong faces among the courts. So we hope that you will not
only enjoy them here, but maybe recognize them too.............
Some of the faces
look a bit familiar. The King of Spades could represent Henry VIII, although he
looks rather friendly here, with his daughter Elisabeth I as Queen. The King of Hearts
probably represents King Frederik I, nicknamed Barbarossa, which is Italian for
Red Beard. He reigned the Holy Roma Empire in the 12th century. His crown
strongly resembles the Imperial crown of the Holy Roman Empire and his sword
ends in a cross.
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| The Ace of Spades and Joker are new to us,
so there's no reference to any maker in our collection. We had to look
twice to recognize the up side of the design and still the whole design
remains a bit unclear to us. It appears to be a scene with trees and........... some
sort of a ruin? |
The other two
suits show royalty that we do not recognize. The Jack of Diamonds has the
British coat of arms is on his chest, although the colours are reversed.
Remarkable is that the Queens in these suits don't hold a flower, but regalia.
Dating the deck is a wild guess, but we suspect it to be
from around 1970. Our deck consists
of 52 cards and one joker.
SO........... if anyone has any further information about
this deck, we'll be happy to hear it and will add the info here.
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And
we got a response! He had already announced it during the latest IPCS
convention and a few days later Chris Rainer sent us a picture of the box,
which at least gave us the title of the deck:
ZIMBABWE PLAYING CARDS
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As
"Southern Rhodesia", the former name of the territory, became an
independent state in 1980 and is since then known as Zimbabwe, the deck
will not be older than 33 years now and our "wild guess" was at
least 10 years off.
But with
this title we could start working and at the moment we assume that the
artwork on the back represents a part of the famous Victoria falls and
we'll try to find a picture to substantiate that.
As for the
manufacturer: although possible, we cannot imagine that it was produced by
a Zimbabwean maker and we think that a South African origin may be worth
researching as a start. We'll also start comparing the Ace of Spades with
those from decks in our collection. That could bring us closer to an
answer too.
But...... if
there's anyone with even further information about this deck, don't
hesitate to share it here!
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CARD OF THE MONTH |
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No, there's nothing wrong with your eyes or reading glasses,
but...... maybe there is.
This card doesn't come from a deck, but was part of a 4 cards set,
published to advertise the SpecSavers chain of opticians. There's an Ace
of Spades, showing the front of a SpecSavers shop. The Queen of Diamonds
and Jack of hearts are also wearing glasses. All these cards (even the
backs) were printed in a hazy and unfocused way.
Only the glasses are printed fairly sharp, which is unusual of course,
as anyone with glasses can tell you. Still, we found the whole idea
attractive and clever enough to put it in a spotlight here.
The courts are all taken from the Berlin pattern. UP |
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