Who invented pack of cards

A Brief History of the Joker Card The history behind the most intriguing card of our card decks is revealed. Refine By. Play more! Learn New Shuffling Tips and Techniques Shuffle like the pros by mastering these simple rules and techniques. An Introduction to Cardistry Cardistry is the non-magical manipulation of playing cards to display creativity, performance art, and skill. Card Magic Learn a short history of magic and find more information on this fascinating and entertaining art.

Five People to Leave at Home on Poker Night You might want to leave these five people at home or poker night could very well be ruined. A History of Playing Cards Check out our verbal and visual history of playing cards, in all their gaming glory.

Unexpected Places to find Vintage Decks Learn how and where to find valuable and beautiful treasures of the online card trade. The Master of Playing Cards Somewhere in Southwestern Germany during the 15th century, the first playing card artist created his masterworks.

It was only natural that this new product eventually spread west and north, and the next major development occurred as a result of their reception in Germany, and one historian has described their rapid spread as "an invasion of playing cards", with soldiers also assisting their movement.

To establish themselves as a card-manufacturing nation in their own right, the Germans introduced their own suits to replace the Italian ones, and these new suits reflected their interest in rural life: acorns, leaves, hearts, and bells; the latter being hawk-bells and a reference to the popular rural pursuit of falconry.

The queen was also eliminated from the Italian courts, and these instead consisted of a King and two knaves, an obermann upper and untermann under. Meanwhile the Two replaced the Ace as the highest card, to create a 48 card deck. Custom decks abounded, and suit symbols used in the novelty playing cards from this era include animals, kitchen utensils, and appliances, from frying pans to printers' inkpads!

The standard German suits of acorns, leaves, hearts, and bells were predominant, however, although in nearby Switzerland it was common to see a variation using flowers instead of leaves, and shields instead of hearts. The Germanic suits are still used in parts of Europe today, and are indebted to this period of history. But the real contribution of Germany was their methods of printing playing cards. Using techniques of wood-cutting and engraving in wood and copper that were developed as a result of the demand for holy pictures and icons, printers were able to produce playing cards in larger quantities.

This led to Germany gaining a dominant role in the playing card trade, even exporting decks to Western Europe, which had produced them in the first place!

Eventually the new suit symbols adopted by Germany became even more common throughout Europe than the original Italian ones. Meanwhile early in the 15th century, the French developed the icons for the four suits that we commonly use today, namely hearts, spades, diamonds, and clubs, although they were called coeurs, piques, carreaux, and trefles respectively.

It is possible that the clubs trefles derive from the acorns and the spades pikes from the leaves of the German playing cards, but they may also have been developed independently. The French also preferred a king, queen, and knave as their court cards. But the real stroke of genius that the French came up with was to divide the four suits into two red and two black, with simplified and clearer symbols.

This meant that playing cards could be produced with stencils, a hundred times more quickly than using the traditional techniques of wood-cutting and engraving. With improved processes in manufacturing paper, and the development of better printing processes, including Gutenberg's printing press , the slower and more costly traditional woodcut techniques previously done by hand were replaced with a much more efficient production.

For sheer practical reasons, the Germans lost their earlier dominance in the playing card market, as the French decks and their suits spread all over Europe, giving us the designs as we know them today. One interesting feature of the French dominance of playing cards in this time is the attention given to court cards.

In the late s French manufacturers began giving the court cards names from famous literary epics such as the Bible and other classics.

It is from this era that the custom developed of associating specific court cards with famous names, the more well-known and commonly accepted ones for the Kings being King David Spades , Alexander the Great Clubs , Charlemagne Hearts , and Julius Caesar Diamonds , representing the four empires of Jews, Greeks, Franks, and Romans. The common postures, clothing, and accessories that we expect in a modern deck of playing cards today find their roots in characters like these, but we cannot be certain how these details originated, since there was much diversity of clothing, weapons, and accessories depicted in the French decks of this time.

But eventually standardization began to happen, and this was accelerated in the s when taxing on playing cards was introduced. With France divided into nine regions for this purpose, manufacturers within each region were ordered to use a standardized design unique to their region. But it was only when playing cards emigrated to England that a common design really began to dominate the playing card industry.

Our journey across the channel actually begins in Belgium, from where massive quantities of cards began to be exported to England, although soldiers from France may also have helped introduce playing cards to England.

Due to heavy taxes in France, some influential card makers emigrated to Belgium, and several card factories and workshops began to appear there. Rouen in particular was an important center of the printing trade. Thousands of decks of Belgian made playing cards were exported to countries throughout Europe, including England. In view of this, it is no surprise that English card players have virtually always been using the French designs.

But playing cards did not pass through Europe without the English leaving their stamp on them. To begin with, they opted to use the names hearts, spades, diamonds, and clubs to refer to the suits that the French had designated as coeurs, piques, carreaux, and trefles. We do not know why, but they based two of the suit names spades and clubs on the names of the Italian deck rather than directly translate the French terms piques pikes and trefles clovers ; one possible explanation is the Spanish suits were exported to England before French ones.

The present image shows King Meliadus and his followers amusing themselves while in captivity. Players are shown holding square-cornered cards fanned in their hands, hidden from view, and playing cards onto the table. They are playing a 4-handed trick-taking game, following suit, and piling tricks cross-wise for ease of counting. The deck uses the Latin suit-signs coins and staves are shown , and the game is being played for money or counters, shown on the table.

This sporting life. Stage and screen. Birds and the bees. They reached Europe around , not directly from China but from the Mameluke empire of Egypt. The history of suitmarks demonstrates a fascinating interplay between words, shapes and concepts. The Mameluke suits were goblets, gold coins, swords, and polo-sticks.