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These cards feature naïve imagery caricaturing Spanish childhood in the early 1870s: modest but charming. They sit somewhere between a toy and a teaching aid because the card backs can be assembled into a map of the Iberian Peninsula

Rohaut et Hutinet were a Paris-based printing and stationery firm active from at least the early 1870s, working across commercial printing, fine stationery, decorative ephemera and, later, cartographic production. Contemporary trade journals show them participating in the 1872 Paper, Stationery and Printing Exhibition in London, and later describe the firm as noted for tasteful presentation and technically competent output, including menus, invitation cards and printed maps (cartes en feuilles). The imagery in these cards is culturally neutral and deliberately child-centred, with a Spanish title card but French graphic sensibilities, suggesting export-oriented production.

Above: a Spanish-style children's card game which makes up a map of Spain on the reverse, published by Rohaut et Hutinet, Paris, France, dated 1871. 40 cards + 2 extra cards, colour lithography, 5,5 x 4,1 cm. Source gallica.bnf.fr / Bibliothèque nationale de France

Reference

Bibliothèque nationale de France : Premio para los ninõs►