Suit Signs and Imagery

Sources of Imagery

The craftsmen's tradition throughout the medieval period was to work from sketch-book models, collected on scraps of vellum. These models were copied time after time, so that images spread between workshops and from master to pupil. Images acquired during journeys abroad often contained errors of observation and proportion which were compounded by subsequent copying.

Imagery on many early playing cards resembles the stock repertory of animals, plants, birds and flowers which recurs almost identically in the marginal drollery, miniature illustrations and trompe l'oeil of widely divergent manuscripts, in sculpture, as well as in playing cards. Often the theme was a playful allusion to tournaments, cavorting children or mock warfare between animals. Cards were produced by artisans whose main source of income might not necessarily have been playing cards. Abilities varied: where lesser artists represented the stock subjects in a stereotyped way, others were able to visualise scenes afresh.

Designs would also have been influenced by written texts and moralised stories. Plants from the herbal, beasts from the bestiary, birds and insects from the Books of Hours, all suggesting a symbolism, a semiotic language, echoed the everyday world of popular beliefs and proverbial wisdom. The pack of playing cards gained a format and structure of its own, and became a new language. In the earliest packs the suit symbols might be anything you could think of: flowers, animals, birds, shields, pomegranates… spades, hearts, clubs and diamonds weren't invented until much later!

Many early examples of playing cards are preserved inside the covers of old books, where they were used as pasteboard to stiffen the covers. This is fortunate, because nearly all the others have perished.

Left: 9 of lions and 3 of herons engraved by the Master of the Playing Cards, c.1450-60. 137 x 91 mm. The central lion has also been identified as an illustration in the 42-line Bible of Mainz printed by Gutenberg, around 1454/55. Herons occur in the borders of a number of manuscripts and early printed books - the one below is from the Hours of Catherine of Cleves, c.1440. See also South German Spanish-suited engraved playing cards.

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