Rouen Pattern - Portrait Rouennais
An attractive XV century French-suited design from Rouen became the standard English & Anglo-American pattern.
Rouen cardmakers, like their Lyonnais counterparts, exported playing cards widely. However, they did not export an “English pattern” to England: they simply used a local French-suited pattern and exported those so successfully that it became the English pattern, and was adopted by English cardmakers. In its modern, double-ended format it is now the standard Anglo-American or International pattern.
The cards made in Rouen at that time were more elongated than today's cards, and include features from cards made for various foreign markets, hence the origins of what became the "English" pattern is a mixture of several late medieval designs. Although their importation was prohibited early in Edward IV's reign, it is believed that cards like these which were imported to England in the XV and XVI centuries are the ancestors of the modern ‘Anglo-American’ pattern.
Pierre Marechal, 1567
Pierre Leroux, 1660
Other early makers include Valery Faucil , Nicolas Bénières, David Dubois, Anthoine Le Cornu and others . Early English pattern cards were also produced in Antwerp by Jehan Henault in 1543. At some point English manufacturers began to make them for themselves. One of the earliest we know about is C. Hewson.
C. Hewson
However, as the French cards were more elongated, the designs needed to be adjusted to fit the different format used by English manufacturers. But when the figures are fitted inside a shorter rectangle, certain body proportions are constrained. Over time the English pattern courts lost their slender figures and life-like qualities and became compressed and more abstract.
• See anonymous English cards found under the floorboards, 1700s
References
d'Allemagne, Henry-René : Les cartes à jouer du XIVe au XXe siècle, Hachette et Cie, Paris, 1906. 2 vols.
Bibliothèque nationale de France: Cartes issues de jeux au portrait de Lyon et de Rouen ►
Bibliothèque nationale de France: Copies de cartes au portrait de Rouen éditées par Pierre Maréchal en 1567 ►
Davidson, Rick: ‘Origins’ playing cards booklet The Art & the History►
By Simon Wintle
Member since February 01, 1996
Founder 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.
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