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Playing Card History
Here are as many theories about the origins of playing cards and their introduction into Europe as there are about the origins of the Easter bunny. A plausible thesis maintains that the Arabs brought cards from the Middle East in the fourteenth century and introduced them to Europe via Spain and Italy. Egypt is often cited as the country of their origin, and Egyptian playing cards do bear a remarkable resemblance to the earliest Spanish and Italian decks. The oft-heard claim that gypsies were responsible for their introduction is not supported by the fact that cards were present in Europe before the gypsies were.
The first known mention of playing cards, according to Luis Monreal, in his article "Iconographia de la Baraja Espanola" (Journal of the International Playing Card Society, February 1989) occurred in Spain in 1371. The absence of playing cards is telling in the works of both Petrarch and Boccaccio. In Italy, a Florentine city ordinance forbidding a newly introduced card game called naibbe is dated May 23, 1376. Cards are not mentioned in England until the fifteenth century, but seem to have first appeared in central and southern Europe at the end of the fourteenth century, lending support to the theory that they were imported, though their exact geographical origins remain obscure.
In fourteenth century Spain, the four suits represented the four dominant principles of the prevailing society. Diamonds (oro = gold, money) stood for capital, Hearts (copas = cups, goblets) for the church, Spades (spadas = swords) for nobility, and Clubs (baston = clubs) for political power. The French followed this pattern closely, renaming the suits carreau (Diamonds), coeur (Hearts), pique (Spades) and trèfle (Clubs).
"Our" 52-pack came around 1480, probably because at that time they started mass-producing decks. The French suit marks were not so difficult to print and it was also just two colors (black and red), that made everything more easy and cheaper. The most common international pictures are developed from early French courts. In the 1700's companies started to print on the backside of cards and in the 1800's the figures with double-ended courts.
According to a treatise by Johannes von Rheinfelden, a German Dominican priest, the fourteenth century deck already consisted of fifty-two cards, divided into four suits of thirteen cards, just as we have today. Shortly after, a new game, tarocchi, was introduced in Italy, using an expanded deck. One card was added to each suit, along with twenty-two additional cards, the trionfi. These cards were used for gambling and still serve that purpose today in certain parts of the world. It is not hard to see that this is the famous Tarot deck, which French occultists first used for fortunetelling at the end of the eighteenth century. Only later were the Tarot cards—previously used only for play—introduced without gambling associations into other countries. This likely created the myth that Tarot cards were devised for fortunetelling. Decks with less than fifty-two cards are convenient for some games (piquet, skat, jass, etc.) but are basically incomplete.
Numerous edicts prohibited playing with cards, on both economic and religious grounds. From the beginning they have been the objects of play, which in one form or another involved money as the winner’s reward. Those gamblers who wanted to increase their chances of winning, likely developed the first trick techniques with cards. The earliest known reference is dated 1408 in Paris, and describes a card cheat who took advantage of his contemporaries with a game baring a psychological resemblance to three-card monte. The first card tricks were likely created by people who enjoyed performing. The earliest known description of a card trick also dates back to the fifteenth century. Luca Pacioli (the father of modern accounting) described a performance in which Giovanni de Jasone de Ferara divined a chosen card. This historic tidbit, recently discovered by Vanni Bossi, appears in an unpublished manuscript co-authored by Leonardo da Vinci. The first card effect to be described and explained in print appeared in 1550 in Girolomo Cardano’s De subtilitate. This effect was the location and identification of a selected card. Three methods are mentioned: the break , the key-card principle and a reference, bereft of detail, to mathematical methods. In a later, expanded edition of this work, Cardano added an anecdote describing the wonderful card effects of Francesco Soma, a Neapolitan lute player.
Although the sixteenth century saw numerous descriptions and explanations of card tricks, the first detailed exposition was in Reginald Scot’s Discoverie of Witchcraft in 1584. In 1593 Horatio Galasso published Giochi di carte bellissimi di regola, e di memoria in Venice. Rather than describe tricks dependent on sleight-of-hand, as Scot had, Galasso described tricks having as their basis intelligent applications of mathematical principles, including a stacked deck, possibly the first description of this idea. Scot and Galasso thus laid the foundations on which card conjuring would build during the following two centuries.
Americans began making their own cards around 1800. Yankee ingenuity soon invented or adopted practical refinements: double-headed court cards (to avoid the nuisance of turning the figure upright), varnished surfaces (for durability and smoothness in shuffling), indexes (the identifying marks placed in the cards’ borders or corners), and rounded corners (which avoid the wear that card players inflict on square corners).
Americans also invented the Joker. It originated around 1870 and was inscribed as the "Best Bower", the highest card in the game of Euchre. Since the game was sometimes called "Juker", it is thought that the Best Bower card might have been referred to as the "Juker card" which eventually evolved into "Joker". By the 1880s, certainly, the card had come to depict a jocular imp, jester or clown. Many other images were also used, especially as Jokers became vehicles for social satire and commercial advertising. Similarly, the backs of cards were used to promote ideas, products and services, and to depict famous landmarks, events — and even fads.
Without a doubt, playing cards are the most fascinating object employed in the art of magic. No less a performer than Hofzinser designated card conjuring the "poetry" of magic. Cards have produced a palette of sciences, from their symbolism of humanity to their numerical properties and all the mathematical possibilities embodied therein. They serve at play and strategy, for fortunetelling and occult practices, and as a vehicle for social communications. They permit an expression of skill and intelligence. Everything is brought together in card conjuring, for there is no effect, no emotion, that can’t be expressed with a deck of cards. They are a microcosm reflecting the "human condition", to use Rousseau’s expression, mirroring the fate and reality of mankind. Card tricks unite the principles of nature (natural material), of art (creativity, interpretations, self expression, talent), of science (psychological and mathematical principles) and of spirituality (symbolism, personal growth and therapy).
Today, people all over the world are familiar with the traditional red or blue back showing cupid astride a two-wheeler. The brand has become synonymous with quality and is still "the world’s favorite playing card."
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