About the World of Playing Cards

The World of Playing Cards is an incrementally updated website about the history and visual art of playing cards.

Founded in 1996, the website is regularly updated. Site updates are available via the archives page, the RSS feed and Twitter.

About the Author

Simon Wintle is the curator of the World of Playing Cards and The English Playing Card Society websites. He has lived at various times in Chile, Spain and England, and currently lives in Snowdonia, North Wales.

Simon's first limited edition pack of playing cards was a replica of a seventeenth century traditional English pack, which he produced from woodblocks and stencils.

Simon is avaliable for:

• Illustrated talks, lectures, slide shows
• Collections and individual items bought & sold
• Reviews of new packs
• Articles for magazines, newsletters, etc
• Digitised images for computer games
• Get in touch via our contact page

Simon Wintle, Founder of the World of Playing Cards

High-Res Images

If you need high resolution versions of our images for handouts or for on-screen use please make a request via our contact page, if we still have the originals to scan we will either upload them to the site or email them to you directly for a small fee.

Bibliography & Credits

View our full bibliography page for works on playing card history and design which have been consulted in preparing this website. Other sources are referenced in the footnotes.

Thanks are due to the following individuals who have contributed images of cards from their collections: Albinas Borisevičius, Sallie Boyd, Steve Campbell, Alison Dunne, Peter Endebrock, Enrique García Martín, Mike Goodall, Hans Hinrup, Mike Jacobs, K. Frank Jensen, Linda Johnson, Anthony Lee, José Manuel Murcia, Dudley Ollis, Diego Peña, Juan José Pérez-Castejón, Juan José Ruiz, Klaus-Jürgen Schultz, Rod Starling, Barney Townshend, Mike & Daf Tregear, Donald Welsh.   Also: Archivo General de la Nación (Buenos Aires), the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, the Worshipful Company of Makers of Playing Cards Collection and the London Metropolitan Archives, City of London Corporation.

Downloads

Visit the downloads center for PDF downloads.

Advertising

The World of Playing Cards currently accepts text-link adverts placed on the homepage and in context within our articles, please contact us for more details and pricing.

This site is supported by Online Casino Test Reports.

Colophon & Production Notes

The World of Playing Cards is set in almost entirely set in Matthew Carter’s Georgia with uses of Sorts Mill Goudy by Barry Schwartz, Garamond by Adobe, Tisa by FontFont and Museo Slab by exlibris Font Foundry.

The site is written in XHTML with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), programmed in PHP and mySQL and hosted by MODX Cloud.

Articles are published using MODX CMS in addtion to our own plug-ins.

The World of Playing Cards has been optimized for the following browsers: Chrome 5+, Safari 5+, and Firefox 3.6+; if the website looks broken in your browser please contact us.

For web design and programming services visit Adam Wintle Design.