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# 16

You are all invited!

 

 

 

  Unique playing card invitation in elegant engraving, used in Burlington, from  Dave Malys' collection (USA)

In my first contribution to this great site I showed you an invitation for a Festival Ball, printed on the back of a playing card from 1815. These kind of invitations were quite common around 1800 in the USA. Nobody ever thought about it to research this typical secondary use, although there are some intriguing questions waiting for an answer. When and where did it start? Why on playing cards? How did this rare custom spread itself over several states? Why do we find most invitations on playing cards in New England? And why not in Great Britain, where most of the inhabitants of New England came from? What kind of dance events were so special that people received personal invitations? Where did these balls take place??

Invitation used in Rockingham, Vermont.
This one is from my collection but I was pleasantly surprised to find some others, in collections in Great Britain and America, all addressed to the same person in Rockingham. 
A beautiful invitation, with great graphical decorations, used in Buckstown, Pennsylvania. Invitation printed on a 5 of Clubs.  Although the invitation was addressed to Mr. C.B. Hall there is an other name written on the card.

collection Gejus van Diggele.

collection of my collector friend Dave Malys.

-all playing card makers unknown-
   

Last Month I was in New England to visit places where playing card invitations were used, hoping to find traces of this long gone tradition. You are all invited to help me looking. If you have playing cards with American invitations for balls and other celebrations, I would be more than happy if you will share this information with me. Just scan the card on both sides and email me, with any additional information that you can supply.
I'm lucky to have 10 American playing card invitations in my collection. Thanks to some American and European fellow collectors I already was able to research another 34 playing card invitations, the earliest dating from 1784. After I have finished my study I will let you know the results.

Thanks!

Gejus                                    

 

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