Souvenir playing cards
“Souvenir Playing Cards” featuring drawings and sketches of late 18th century Riga by Johann Christoph Brotze.
This pack of 54 cards features the drawings and sketches of late 18th century Riga by Johann Christoph Brotze, who was born in Görlitz, Electorate of Saxony, in 1742. He went to Riga in 1768 and spent the next 46 years as a teacher at the Riga Imperial Lyceum. He died in 1823.
During his time in Riga he collected historical data and depicted in drawings and paintings everything he saw around him in his everyday life, as well as most buildings and monuments of significance. They include views of Baltic estates, castles, towns and settlements, public edifices, dwelling houses, churches as well as topographic maps of separate places, inhabitants of towns and countryside. Many of his drawings depicted people of different ethnic groups, who had settled in Riga in the 1770’s – 1790’s, and in particular their dress.
Above: the box from “Souvenir Playing Cards” featuring drawings and sketches of late 18th century Riga by Johann Christoph Brotze.
This ornate pack was produced by Centrs Alfa, and was designed by Georgijs Krutojs. The court cards and jokers portray individuals in full length. The pip cards are double-ended, with the pips arranged horizontally at the centre and with various countryside, town and village scenes shown above and below.
Above: “Souvenir Playing Cards” featuring drawings and sketches of late 18th century Riga by Johann Christoph Brotze.
Further References
By Peter Burnett
United Kingdom • Member since July 27, 2022
I graduated in Russian and East European Studies from Birmingham University in 1969. It was as an undergraduate in Moscow in 1968 that I stumbled upon my first 3 packs of “unusual” playing cards which fired my curiosity and thence my life-long interest. I began researching and collecting cards in the early 1970s, since when I’ve acquired over 3,330 packs of non-standard cards, mainly from North America, UK and Western Europe, and of course from Russia and the former communist countries.
Following my retirement from the Bodleian Library in Dec. 2007 I took up a new role as Head of Library Development at the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP) to support library development in low-income countries. This work necessitated regular training visits to many sub-Saharan African countries and also further afield, to Vietnam, Nepal and Bangladesh – all of which provided rich opportunities to further expand my playing card collection.
Since 2019 I’ve been working part-time in the Bodleian Library where I’ve been cataloguing the bequest of the late Donald Welsh, founder of the English Playing Card Society.
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