# The Invention of Printing/Chapter 5

V
Printed and Stenciled Playing Cards.
Playing Cards not made by the Frotton…Their Manufacture an Industry of Importance…Decree of the Senate of Venice prohibiting the Importation of Cards…Early Notices of Card-Making in Germany…Probable Method of Manufacture…Illustrations of a Playing Card of the Fifteenth Century…Jost Amman's Illustrations of a Print Colorer and an Engraver on Wood…Playing Cards made from Engraved Blocks…Early Notices of Card Playing in France…Cards Prohibited to the People in France and Spain…Introduced in Italy in 1379…Not Invented in Germany. An Oriental Game…Illustrations of Chinese Cards…Originated in Hindostan…Transmitted to Europe through the Saracens…Popularity of Cards in Europe…Cards Denounced by the Clergy…New Forms and New Games of Cards, with Illustrations…Unsuccessful Attempts to make Cards a Means of Instruction…Cards not an Unmixed Evil…Induced Respect for Letters and Education…Cards probably made before Images…Made by Block-Printing…Most largely made by this process in Germany.
Bibliophile Jacob.
The hypothesis, for it is nothing more, that all the early prints were produced by the frotton does not satisfactorily explain the large production of merchantable printed matter during the first half of the fifteenth century. Friction would have served then, as it does now, for trial proofs or experiments, but it was a method altogether too slow and uncertain to meet the requirements of an extended business. The playing cards and prints so common during this period must have been made by a quicker method. That there was an established international trade in playing cards and in other kinds of printed work, as early as the year 1441, may be inferred from the following decree of the senate of Venice:
   1441, Oct. 11. Whereas, the art and mystery of making cards and printed figures, which is in use at Venice, has fallen to decay, and this in consequence of the great quantity of printed playing cards and colored figures which are made out of Venice, to which evil it is necessary to apply some remedy, in order that the said artists, who are a great many in family, may find encouragement rather than foreigners: Let it be ordained and established, according to the petition that the said masters have supplicated, that from this time in future, no work of the said art that is printed or painted on cloth or paper—that is to say, altar-pieces, or images, or playing cards, or any other thing that may be made by the said art, either by painting or by printing—shall be allowed to be brought or imported into this city, under pain of forfeiting the work so imported, and thirty livres and twelve soldi, of which fine one-third shall go to the state, one-third to Giustizieri Vecchi, to whom this affair is committed, and one-third to the accuser. With this condition, however, that the artists who make the said works in this city shall not expose the said works for sale in any other place but their own shops, under the penalty aforesaid, except on the day of Wednesday at S. Paolo, and on Saturday at S. Marco.
The engraved images here noticed were probably prints of saints or sacred personages like those of which engraved illustrations have been given on previous pages. The altar-pieces were prints upon cotton or linen cloth, of a similar character, but of much larger size.
Playing cards, which are twice mentioned in the decree, seem to have been considered as of equal importance with images and altar-pieces. The specification of three distinct kinds of printed work, coupled as it is with the allusion to "any other thing that may be made by the said art," is an intimation that the manufacturers, "who were a great many ​in family," were even then applying the art of printing and colored stenciling to many other purposes.
The decree says that the art had fallen to decay. When it was in its most prosperous condition in Venice cannot be ascertained from the record, nor from any other source. The author who found this document says that he had fragments of coarse engravings on wood which represented some parts of the city of Venice as they appeared before the year 1400. He thinks these rude engravings must have been cut in the latter part of the fourteenth century. That they could have been made at this time is not improbable, but the direct evidence is wanting. There are, however, abundant reasons for the belief that engravings on wood were made in Venice, not experimentally, but in the way of business, many years before the decree of 1441. And they must have been made elsewhere. The printers of playing cards and colored figures must have been many in family beyond as well as in Venice. If the foreign printers had not been formidable competitors, there would have been no request for the prohibitory decree.
Nothing is said in the decree about the nationality of the foreign competitors, but we may get this knowledge from another source. An authentic record of the town of Ulm in Germany contains a brief entry which tells us that playing cards in barrels were sent from that city to Sicily and Italy, to be bartered for delicacies and general merchandise.
​The same book contains a defense of the game of playing cards under the date of 1397. Another old German record, the Burgher Book of Augsburg for the year 1418, specifically notices card-makers. The Tax Book of Nuremberg, for the years 1433 and 1435, names Eliza, a card-maker. The same book, for the year 1438, mentions Margaret, the card-painter. The words kartenmacherin, card-maker, and kartenmalerin, card-painter, which are found in these books, do not clearly specify the process. It has been suggested that these cards could have been drawn and painted by means of stencil plates.
The word formschneider, form-cutter, the word now used in Germany as the equivalent of engraver on wood, appears for the first time in the year 1449, in the books of the city of Nuremberg. The same records mention one Wilhelm Kegler, briftrucker, or card-printer, under the date of 1420. They also mention one Hans Formansneider, in the year 1397, but Formansneider should not be construed as engraver on wood. It should be read Hans Forman, schneider or tailor. In this, as in some other cases, it will be seen that the facility of the German language for making new words by the compounding of old ones, is attended with peculiar disadvantages. The manufactured words are susceptible of different meanings.
These notices of card-making are not enough to prove that the process employed was that of xylography. They prove only that card-making was an industry of note in the towns of Ulm, Augsburg and Nuremberg. But when these notices of early card-making are considered in connection with early German prints, like the St. Christopher of 1423, which were discovered in the vicinity of these towns, there is no room for doubt. If prints of saints were made by engraving on wood, cards should have been made by the same art. The connection of cards and image prints in the decree of the Senate of Venice is evidence that they were made by the same persons and by the same process.
It may seem strange that the little town of Ulm, in the heart of Germany, should establish by a long sea route a trade ​in playing cards with cities on the Mediterranean and the Adriatic. It is but one of many evidences of the growing spirit of commercial enterprise which pervaded all the cities of Germany. It is not more strange than the fact that, in 1505, merchants of Augsburg, a city at a great distance from navigable waters, joined with the Portuguese in an extensive traffic with the eastern coast of Africa.
Playing cards may have been made at as early dates in other countries besides Germany and Italy. We shall soon see that they were in common use in many parts of Europe at the beginning of the fifteenth century, but we have no certain knowledge that they were made from engraved blocks in other places. Our knowledge of the fact that they were printed in Italy and Germany is based entirely on occasional notices in old manuscript records. We have indications that they were printed, but we lack the proof. There are no cards in existence which can be offered, with any degree of confidence, as specimens of the block-printing of 1440. The xylographic cards of which fac-similes are most common in books which treat of pastimes, are of the sixteenth century; the copper-plate cards described and illustrated by Weigel and Breitkopf were made either during the latter half of the fifteenth or in the sixteenth century.
The engraving on the following page is a fac-simile of one of a set of forty-eight playing cards now preserved in the British Museum. The entire set, printed on six separate sheets of paper, eight cards to each sheet, was found in that great hiding place of discarded sheets, the inner lining of a book cover, for which, to adopt the bookbinder's phrase, it served as a stiffener. The sheets may have been rejected for imperfections, and put in the book cover because they were unsalable. The book in which they were found was printed and bound by some unknown or undescribed printer before the year 1500. If rudeness of engraving could be considered ​as sufficient proof of superior antiquity, this card should be rated as one of the oldest pieces of engraving on wood. The cutting of this block could have been done by any carver on wood, or even by a carpenter. But the quality of the engraving is not a proper criterion of the condition of the art of engraving on wood during the period in which it was made. It is obviously a cheap card, made for the uses of people who could pay but a small price. There may have been other reasons for the rudeness of the work. The stiff and conventional manner of drawing the figures may have been as popular then as a similar method of designing playing cards is at this day.
A Playing Card of the Fifteenth Century. [From Singer.]Dull red and dark green were the only colors used in illuminating this set of cards. They were laid on with brush and stencil. The stencil is one of the oldest forms of labor-saving contrivance for abridging the labor of writing or drawing. It was used, as has been stated, in the sixth century by a Roman emperor who could not write; it was used for the same purpose by Theodoric, king of the Ostrogoths, and by the emperor Charlemagne. It is used to this day by merchants who mark boxes, in preference to writing, printing, branding, or painting. It has advantages of cheapness and simplicity that commend it to all manufacturers. It is even used by publishers of books for tinting maps, fashion plates, and illuminated pamphlet covers.
Jost Amman, in his Book of Trades, has presented us a representation of the print stenciler, as he practised his work ​in 1564. The method here shown is, probably, the method in general use in 1440, for the coloring of playing cards and image prints. We see the bowls that contain different colors, with their proper brushes, on top of the chest. The colorer is sweeping the brush over the perforated metal plate, and The Print Colorer. [From Jost Amman]filling up the outlines of the print. The neat pile of sheets before him and near his right hand shows that he is working with precision and with system. Stencil painting was work of care and neatness, but it was so simple that we can clearly understand that it could have been done by women in Nuremberg as effectively as it is done now.
The illustration of the engraver on wood which appears in the same Book of Trades puts before us a man in a richer dress, plainly a workman of higher grade than the stencil painter. He seems to be tracing outlines on the block. The technical accessories about this engraver are the same as those in use at this day—the graver, the whetstone, and, possibly, a water globe lens in the corner near the window casement.
​Playing cards and engraving on wood bear to each other a curious relation. The introduction of the cards in Europe was soon followed by the revival, or as Bibliophile Jacob of Paris characterizes it, by the invention, of engraving on wood. Whatever differences of opinion may exist as to whether the art was revived or invented, it is certain that playing cards were the means by which early printing was made popular. Cards were the only kind of printed work which promised to repay the labor of engraving. The Engraver on Wood. [From Jost Amman.]People who could neither read nor write, and who had no desire to be taught either accomplishment, derived great pleasure from them. There was no other kind of printed matter, not even the image prints, which found so many buyers in every condition of society. The fixing of the earliest practice as a regular business of engraving on wood in Europe depends, in some degree, on the fixing of the date of the first introduction of playing cards. The determination of this date has been made a national question, and the theme of books containing much curious information.
Ambrose Firmin Didot quotes a scrap of poetry from a French romance of 1328, which alludes to the folly of games of dice, checkers and cards. Other French writers maintain that playing cards were in use in France as early as 1350. ​Bullet says that playing cards were used in France in the year 1376. But the testimony in confirmation of these dates is ambiguous and insufficient. The first unequivocal notice of playing cards in France is to be found in an account book for the year 1392, kept by one Charles Poupart, treasurer to Charles vi. In this book is an entry to this effect: "Paid to Jacquemin Gringonneur, painter, for three packs of cards, gilded, colored, and ornamented with various designs, for the amusement of our lord the king, 56 sols of Paris. " The mind of Charles vi had been seriously affected by sunstroke, and these cards were provided for his lucid intervals during which he suffered from melancholy. We are not told how these cards were made—whether they were first drawn by hand, or whether they were printed from cut blocks before they were painted. The price paid was not small: fifty-six sols of Paris in 1393 would be equivalent to one hundred and fifty francs in 1874. In 1454, a pack of cards purchased for the Dauphin of France cost but five sous of Tours, the equivalent of twelve or thirteen francs of modern French money. The difference in these prices is some indication of a cheapened manufacture.
The earliest and most convincing evidence of the popularity of playing cards in Paris is contained in an order of the provost of that city, under the date of 1397, in which order he forbids working people from indulging in games of tennis, bowls, dice, cards, or nine-pins on working days. That the game was then comparatively new is inferred from the omission of playing cards in an ordinance of the city of Paris, for the year 1369, in which other popular games were minutely specified.
The Cabinet of Prints attached to the National Library at Paris contains seventeen cards which are supposed to be the relics of the three packs made for Charles vi by Gringonneur; but these cards were, without doubt, drawn by hand. This cabinet has no printed cards which can be attributed to the ​fourteenth century. Its oldest relics of this kind are eighteen printed cards which may have been made in France during the reign of Charles vii, or between the years 1442 and 1461.
Playing cards seem to have been popular in Spain before they were known in France. They were supposed to be so demoralizing to the people, that John i, king of Castile, in the year 1387, thought it necessary, to prohibit them entirely. To have acquired this popularity, the cards should have been made by some process as economical as that of printing. We have, however, no knowledge that the cards were printed. They could have been made by stencils. Chatto says that the relics of playing cards which he thought were the oldest were made exclusively with stencils.
Cards were known in Italy as early as 1379. An old manuscript history of the town of Viterbo, which states this fact, says that "In this year, a year of great distress [occasioned by the war between the anti-pope Clement vii and the pope Urban vi], was brought into Viterbo, the game of cards, which came from the land of the Saracens, and by them is called Naib."
​Many German authors claim that playing cards were in common use throughout Germany at a much earlier period. Breitkopf quotes the following passage from a book called the Golden Mirror, said to have been written about the middle of the fifteenth century by a Dominican friar of the name of Ingold: "The game is right deceitful, and, as I have read, was first brought in Germany in the year 1300." Another writer quotes an old chronicle, that describes the emperor Rudolph as amusing himself with cards in the old town of Augsburg at some undefined time before his death in 1291. It cannot be proved that the cards here mentioned were true playing cards. It is more probable that the amusement noticed was the game of king and queen, which was forbidden to the clergy by the synod of Worcester in 1240, and which has sometimes been erroneously understood as a game of cards. The notices of card-makers and card-printers in the town books of Nuremberg and Augsburg should be regarded as the earliest records of the use of playing cards in Germany.
Chinese Playing Cards. [From Breitkopf.]
The introduction of this oriental pastime in civilized Europe has been attributed to the Moors of Spain, to eastern Jews who traded on the shores of the Mediterranean, to Gypsies who made their appearance in Germany at the beginning ​of the fifteenth century. Whether they were introduced by Moor, Christian, Jew or Gypsy is of minor importance. It concerns us more to know how they were received. We have abundant evidence that the cards supplied a universal want, and that they soon became as popular with the poor and ignorant as they had been with the rich and noble. While the Duke of Milan found amusement, as he did in 1415, with a suite of cards elaborately painted by artists of renown on plates of ivory, at a cost of fifteen hundred crowns, and while Flemish nobles were playing at games of hazard with cards engraved on silver plates, the working people of France and Spain, soldiers in Italy, and traveling mechanics in Germany were diverting themselves in wine-shops and public gardens, in huts and by the road-side, with similar games, played with greasy cards which had been printed or stenciled on coarse paper. The cards were adapted to all tastes, and there was a fascination in them which made men neglectful of duty.
The evil results of this infatuation were soon perceived. Playing cards were denounced not only by kings and the provosts of cities, but by the more zealous and conscientious priests of the church. At the synod of Langres held in 1404, the fathers of the church forbid all games of playing cards to the clergy. On the fifth day of May, in the year 1423, St. Bernard of Sienna preached against playing cards from the steps of the Church of St. Peter, with such effect, that his hearers ran to their houses, and brought therefrom all the games of hazard that they owned—cards, dice and checkers—and burnt them in the public square. One card-maker, who felt that his business had been ruined by the sermon, went in tears to the saint, and said, "Father, I am a card maker, and know no other trade. You have forbidden me to make cards and have consequently condemned me to die from starvation." Whereupon the ready priest said, "If you know how to paint, paint this image"—showing him the figure of Christ, with the monogram i. h. s. in the centre of a halo of glory. The card-maker, we are told, followed the ​judicious advice. The proper sequel is not wanting: virtue had proper reward; the converted image-maker soon became rich. In 1452, the monk John Capistan preached for three hours in Nuremberg with a similar result. The conscience-stricken people brought into the market-place "76 jousting sledges, 3,640 backgammon boards, 40,000 dice, and cards innumerable," and burnt them in the market-place.
The attacks of the clergy had no permanent effect. At the end of the fifteenth century, playing cards were more popular than ever. Other games were invented, and new forms of cards of quainter or of more graceful patterns were produced. Sometimes they were engraved on copper plates, and were painted with all the delicacy of fine miniatures. Despairing of success in their attempts to entirely abolish the practice, moralists undertook to divert cards from their first purpose, and to make them a means of instruction as well as of amusement. Of this character is an old pack of fifty cards engraved on copper plates, and supposed to be the work of Finiguerra, which has been preserved in an Italian library. One of the cards bears the printed date, 1485. The pack is divided in five suites: the first suite contains cards that represent, by figures and words in the Venetian dialect, the various conditions of men from the pope to the beggar; the second suite contains the names and figures of the nine muses, with Apollo added to make the complement; the third illustrates branches of polite learning from grammar to theology; the fourth exhibits cardinal virtues, like justice and prudence; the fifth, displays the heavenly bodies, the Moon, Saturn, the stars, Chaos and the First Cause. This game, obviously made up for the benefit of young collegians, was, probably, no more popular with them than the scientific story books of 1820–30 were with the boys of that period. The combination of abstruse sciences with a frivolous amusement may rightfully be considered a problem of despair.
The illustration on the next leaf is the reduced fac-simile of a suite of twenty-two playing cards, intended, apparently, ​to convey solemn religious truths in the form of a game of life and death. We do not know how the game was played: we have to accept the figures upon the cards as their own explanation and commentary. In the figures of Jupiter and of the Devil, we see the powers which shape the destinies of men. The Wheel of Fortune is emblematic of the fate which assigns to one man the condition of a Hermit, and to another that of an Emperor. The virtues of Temperance, Justice and Strength which man opposes to Fate, the frivolity of the Fool, the happiness of the Lover (if he can be happy who is cajoled by two women), and the pride of the Empress, are all dominated by the central card bearing an image of the skeleton Death—Death which precedes the Last Judgment and opens to the righteous the House of God. In these cards we have a pictorial representation of scenes from one of the curious spectacle plays of the middle ages, which were often enacted in the open air to the accompaniments of dance and music. The union of fearful mysteries with ridiculous accessories, and the ghastly suggestion of the fate of all men, as shown in the card of Death the reaper—these were the features which gave point and character to the series of strange cartoons popular for many centuries in all parts of civilized Europe under the title of the Dance of Death.
This was but one of the many innovations proposed as substitutes for the older oriental games. In the latter part of the fifteenth century, playing cards were made in Italy with figures which represented the four great monarchies of the ancient world, with which a childish game was played in imitation of war and conquest. Suitable marks on the cards designated the four different classes of society; hearts were the symbol of the clergy; spades (from the Italian spada, a sword) were for the nobility; clubs stood for the peasantry; and diamonds represented the citizens or burghers.
Reduced Fac-simile of French Copper-plate Playing Cards of the Sixteenth Century. [From Breitkopf.]
​Logical Playing Cards, or Logic Realized and Made Comprehensible through Pleasant Exercises with Pictures. The cards were filled with mysterious symbols intended as keys to the entire art of reasoning. The difficult science was adapted to the meanest capacity, by puerile methods which subsequently provoked the contempt of Erasmus. Each card had some pedantic name like Proposition, Predicate or Syllogism. Could there be a more unattractive game?
Eminent German artists—among them Martin Schongauer and the Master of 1466—undertook to supplant the stiff and barbarous figures that had been used on playing cards, with designs of merit. They drew and engraved new face figures of most extraordinary character, in which satirical and poetic fancies were strangely blended. The amorousness of the monks and the coquetry of the ladies, the quarrels of termagants among the peasantry, the revenge of hares who are roasting their enemy man and his friend the dog, are the subjects of some cards. On other German cards of this period are represented, in startling contrast, the sweet and saintly faces of pure women, heroic men riding in triumph, and filthy sows with their litters.
Jost Amman designed, and perhaps engraved, a full pack of cards which was published in book form with explanatory verses in Latin and German. Rejecting the established forms of hearts, clubs, spades and diamonds for the designation of the suites, he substituted books, printers' inking balls, wine pots and drinking cups. The moral that he endeavored to inculcate was the advantages of industry and learning over idleness and drunkenness. But the intended moral is not as clear as it should be. Some of the figures are exceedingly gross, although they are drawn with admirable skill and spirit.
These innovations had but a transient popularity. The people played cards, not for instruction in art, science or ​
| French Card of the Fifteenth Century. [From Lacroix.] | German Card of the Sixteenth Century. [From Lacroix.] |
| German Card of the Sixteenth Century. [From Lacroix.] | German Card of the Fifteenth Century. [From Breitkopf.] |
​morality, but for amusement, and they would not suffer the games to be diverted from their first purpose of the pleasure of hazard. The old games and the old figures were deeply rooted in their memories and habits. They would have no changes, and there have been none of any importance. The hard conventional figures of king, queen and jack which are to be found on the oldest playing cards have been repeated almost without alteration in the popular cards of every succeeding century. We can readily understand the reasons why the scholastic and scientific games were rejected, but it would be difficult to account for the preference always manifested for coarse outlines and clumsy drawing in the figures.
Although playing cards led to gambling, and to forms of dissipation which required restraint, their general use was not an unmixed evil. To the common people, they were a means of education; a circuitous and a dangerous means, no doubt, but not the less effectual. The medieval churl whose ignorance was so dense that he failed to see the advantages of education, and who would have refused to learn his letters by any persuasion, did perceive that there was amusement in playing cards, and did take the trouble to learn the games. With him, as with little children, the course of instruction began with bright-colored little pictures and the explanation of hidden meanings in absurd-looking little spots or symbols. In the playing of the game, his dull mind was trained to a new and a freer exercise of his reasoning faculties, and he must have been inspired with more of respect for the dimly seen utility of painted or printed symbols. To the multitude of early card players, cards were of no other and no greater benefit as a means of mental discipline. To men of thought and purpose, they taught a more impressive lesson of the value of paper and letters. They induced inquiries that led ​to important resolves. If a few arbitrarily arranged signs on bits of paper could greatly amuse a party of friends during a long evening, would not the letters of the alphabet as they were combined in books, furnish a still greater and an unfailing source of amusement?
The meagre notices of card-makers and card-painters in old town-books of Germany and in the decree of Venice do not tell us whether cards were made before or after image prints. Those who have written most learnedly on this subject, tell us that the cards were made before the images; that at first they were drawn and painted by hand; that they were afterward colored by stencils; that when this method was found too slow, blocks were engraved and printed; and that the image prints were subsequently introduced for the purpose of counteracting the evil influences of cards. These propositions are ingenious, but it must be confessed that we have no certain knowledge that the improvement was made in this order. This theory of gradual development is based on conjecture, and its best support is derived from a consideration of the fact that cards were in common use before we have any indications of the existence of image prints. That the cards should have been made by engraving before the images seems reasonable when we consider that the workmanship of the cards was of a much ruder nature. The experimenting amateur who knew that he was unable to cut a block like that of the St. Christopher, would readily undertake to engrave the spots and face figures of the earlier cards.
Breitkopf, an expert type-founder and a writer of authority, stands almost alone in his opinion that playing cards were ​made after the image prints. He says that the engravers who made cards also made images, and he adds the curious fact that in some places cards and images were called by the same name.
The curt and careless manner in which the business of card-making is mentioned in the old records is an indication that the process used was not novel. We do not find in the writings of any author of the fifteenth or sixteenth centuries a statement that the earliest playing cards were made by a new art. That they were made by block-printing at the beginning of the fifteenth century in Italy and Germany seems clearly established. That they were made at a corresponding period in Spain and France, where cards were as common, cannot be proved. It is probable that the Germans derived their knowledge of cards from Italy, but the evidences of an early manufacture by printing are decidedly in favor of southern Germany, a district in which the most famous image prints have been found, and which, at a later period, was the birthplace of many eminent engravers on wood.
* ↑ I have used the translation as I find it in Ottley's Inquiry into the Origin and Early History of Engraving, vol. i, p. 47. The original is given by Temanza, Lettere Pittoriche, vol. v, p. 321. Temanza found this decree in an old book of regulations which belonged to a fraternity of Venetian printers.
* ↑ Weigel, in his Infancy of Printing, plate 10, presents the fac-simile of an old printed altar-piece, about eight inches wide and twenty inches long, which contains a representation of the Virgin and the infant Christ, The engraving is in outline only, The interior was colored by stencils, like the image prints.
* ↑ Temanza had some old Venetian playing cards of unknown date, which he believed were made at or about the time of the publication of this decree. They were of large size, on thick paper, and elaborately decorated with gold and colors. The early Venetian playing cards were, probably, more expensively made, and were offered at higher prices than the German cards. In the field of art and ornament, and even in the trades which called for a higher degree of skill, the Venetians surpassed all their competitors. This pre-eminence was maintained many years after the invention of typography. The earlier books of Venice are famous for the whiteness of their paper and the beauty of their types, as well as for admirable presswork and solid bindings.
* ↑ Heineken, Idée générale, page 245. He does not give the date. The record from which he quotes, the Red Book of Ulm, so called because the initials were in that color, ends with the year 1474.
* ↑ Singer's Researches into the History of Playing Cards. This book abounds in curious information and has many valuable fac-similes.
* ↑ Breitkopf says that the stencil painting of prints was done with great rapidity by the medieval colorist. He alludes to an old German saying of "painting the twelve apostles with one stroke," which, no doubt, refers to the expeditious painting of a once popular image print, of which there is now no fragment in existence.
* ↑ Some antiquarians say that this print is a representation of Amman.
* ↑ Didot, Essai sur la typographie, p. 564.
* ↑ Bibliophile Jacob, Curiosites de l'histoire des arts, etc., p. 48.
* ↑ One of the cards bears the name of the maker, F. Clerc. The costumes of the figures are French, and of the fashion of the court of Charles vii. One of the queens is a rude copy of the well known portrait of the queen Marie of Anjou; another queen is from an authentic portrait of the king's mistress, Gérarde Cassinel. The robe of one of the kings is plentifully sprinkled with the fleur-de-lis; the figure of another king is that of a hairy savage with a torch in his hand. These singular cards illustrate a frightful accident which made a profound impression on the people of France. To divert the half-crazed king Charles vi, a masquerade was planned for a ball given by Queen Blanche, on the 29th of January, 1392, in which masquerade the king and five of the gentlemen of the court took the parts of savages, The costumes were made by encasing the actors in tight-fitting linen garments, covered with warm pitch and tow. In this uncouth attire, and linked together with clanking chains, they danced in the ball-room to the amusement of the men and the terror of the ladies. Wishing to discover one of the maskers, the Duke of Orleans snatched a torch from the hand of a servant, and thrust it too near an unhappy masker's face. In a moment he was covered with a blaze which quickly spread to his fellows. The king was rescued in time, but four of the masqueraders were burned to death.
* ↑ Breitkopf, Versuch den Ursprung der Spielkarten, p. 9, note g. The fac-similes of playing cards in this book are exceedingly grotesque.
* ↑ Cards are not mentioned in a specification of popular games in the Stadtholdt Book of Augsburg for the year 1274. The ordinances of the town of Nuremberg for the period between the years 1286 and 1299 prohibit gambling, but they do not mention cards. For the period between 1380 and 1384, they are both mentioned and permitted.
* ↑ In Singer's Researches into the History of Playing Cards may be found many fac-similes of early Hindostanee cards, some of which, we are told, were engraved on plates of ivory. These fac-similes show that the primitive game was a modification of the old Indian game of chess.
* ↑ The industry of Jost Amman was as remarkable as his skill. The old historian of early printers, Sandraart, says, on the authority of his pupil George Keller, that during the four years in which Keller lived with him, Amman produced designs enough to load a wagon.
* ↑ The ordinances of Nuremberg between the years 1380 and 1384 permitted gambling and betting, but in moderation: "Always excepting horse-racing, shooting with crossbows, cards, shovel boards, tric-trac and bowls, at which a man may bet from two pence to a groat." Von Murr, as quoted by Chatto, Treatise On Wood Engraving, p. 42.
* ↑ Having visited many convents in Franconia, Suabia, Bavaria, and the Austrian States, I everywhere discovered in their libraries many image prints engraved on wood and pasted either in the beginning or the end of old volumes of the fifteenth century. These facts taken together confirm me in the opinion that the next step of the engraver on wood, after playing cards, was the engraving of figures of saints, which, distributed and lost among the laity, were carefully preserved by the monks, who pasted them on the inner covers of the books with which they furnished their libraries, After the engravers had succeeded in making prints of saints, they found it very easy to engrave historical subjects, with explanations in words. Heineken, Idée générale, etc., p. 251.
* ↑ Wood-cuts of sacred subjects were known to the common people of Suabia, and the adjacent districts, by the name of Halgen or Halglein, saints or little saints, a word which, in course of time, was also applied to prints of all kinds. In France also, the earliest prints were known as dominos, or lords, a word which was intended to convey the same meaning. The maker of prints was known as a dominotier, whether he made profane cards or pious images. In time the word so far declined from its first meaning that it was applied not only to printers of cards and images, but to the makers of fancifully colored wall-papers. Versuch der Ursprung der Spielkarten, etc., vol. ii, p. 174.