Art Nouveau Whist playing cards from a small Dutch factory

The Hollandsche Speelkaarten en Spellenfabriek (Dutch Playing card and Games factory) in The Hague, Netherlands is a relatively unknown company who produced playing cards in the 1920's. Very little is known about this factory and as far as I know no official records have been found. Because the playing cards often have a Dutch tax stamp on the ace of hearts we know that they published playing cards between 1920 and 1927, the dates when playing card taxation was levied in the Netherlands. Until now only five different packs have been identified as being made by this factory two of which I will present to you in this post.

• The first is a very attractive deck in Art Nouveau style. The ace of spades is in the form of a peacock and the other aces show small pictures of gnomes, a courting couple and people playing cards. Unusually the aces only have one corner index and an illustration on the other three aces in one corner. However, this makes them certainly more appealing. The court cards are quite traditional but beautifully coloured giving the cards a luxury feel which was probably intentional. The reverse shows the Dutch coat of arms and the box shows the monogram and the full name of the factory. The pack has 52 cards.
• The second deck, also with 52 cards, has similar court cards but they are not so richly coloured as the first pack. The aces are more traditional and depict monochrome views of well known Dutch places at each end. The reverse is decorative with a monogram of the company name. Until now no packs from this factory have been found with a joker.

Below: the box and reverse of the first pack.

Below: the aces and several cards from the second pack.

Should any reader have more information about this playing cards factory then please let me know.

All cards shown are from the collection of Paul Symons ©