Cartes Questions-Devinettes

Imagerie Pellerin “Guess What?” card game

A “Questions & Answers” family game produced by Imagerie Pellerin, Épinal, France, c.1840.

Pellerin was a celebrated publisher of popular art, including playing cards and games. In 1796, Jean Charles Pellerin had set up the “Imagerie d’Epinal” and popularised printed images of everyday scenes. Épinal, France is best known for the “Images d'Épinal”, the popular prints created by Imagerie Pellerin and the Pellerin family. These hand-coloured woodcuts or lithographs of military subjects, storybook characters and other folk themes were widely distributed throughout the 19th century. Pellerin ended up becoming the leading French firm in the field of popular imagery and also published playing cards and tarots.

Right: outer wrapper, printed in red, which mentions that the set contains 40 cards and is no.3 out of twelve different collections. The cards themselves are printed in blue and are uncoloured. The cards are also designed as optical illusions, and hidden images or faces appear depending on how you look at the drawings.

See also:   Black Peter   Cromy   Card Games   Happy Families   Hijitus   Illustrated Proverbs   Jaques' Happy Families   Noddy Happy Families   Pekka-Peli   Peruvian Animals Quartet   Reshuffle   Walt Disney   Zoo Comics  

By Simon Wintle

Member since February 01, 1996

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Curator and editor of the World of Playing Cards since 1996. He is a former committee member of the IPCS and was graphics editor of The Playing-Card journal for many years. He has lived at various times in Chile, England and Wales and is currently living in Extremadura, Spain. 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.