López y Compañía satirical pack

The base of the ace of cups is a setting for a cat stalking a mouse.

The colouring is vivid, although not always precisely registered, giving some cards an appearance reminiscent of hand colouring. López’s contemporary advertising, however, emphasised the durability and consistency of his colours. One advertisement invited customers to place a card in a glass of water for as long as they wished, claiming that the colours would remain unaltered. This suggests that permanence and uniformity, rather than the slightly irregular registration visible on surviving examples, were the principal qualities being promoted. The engraver's name «Cabanach» can be seen on the four of coins.

The surviving López material belongs to a transitional period in which different printing and colouring techniques were available. The precise nature of the process protected by the 1855 privilege remains unclear, and it would be premature to equate it with any one particular printing technique. By the later 1860s, Fulladosa y Compañía was using newer methods, including lithography, to reproduce López designs. Yet the emphasis on colour permanence continued: later Fulladosa advertisements described its cards as “pintados con colores permanentes”, suggesting that durable colour remained an important selling point of the business.

The ornamental elements are equally exuberant: huge cups, elaborate costumes, plumed hats and exaggerated facial expressions. Other suit symbols acquire decorative additions. The four of coins contains a vignette of two comical figures seated at a table playing cards. Much of the humour comes from pushing the established visual language of playing cards towards absurdity. Theatrical, carnivalesque and deliberately absurd are perhaps the most appropriate terms for the overall effect.

López y Compañía satirical playing cards, Barcelona 1861–62. © The Trustees of the British Museum number 1982,U.4571.1-48 ►

López’s satirical experiment should also be viewed within the broader nineteenth-century Spanish tradition of using popular printed imagery, including playing cards, for comic and satirical purposes. Rather than merely illustrating a conventional Spanish pack, López transformed its familiar structure into a medium for caricature and visual humour.

¹ The precise nature of López's patented method remains unclear. The 1855 privilege describes it simply as “un método para pintar naipes aplicado á la imprenta”, and the surviving cards provide evidence of colour printing but do not by themselves establish exactly how the patented process worked. By the later 1860s, newer printing methods were being adopted, and Fulladosa subsequently reproduced some López designs lithographically, showing that the designs themselves outlived the particular production methods with which López had begun.

References

Arxiu Històric de la Ciutat de Barcelona : Catàleg de la Col·leció de Naips (2018) ►

British Museum : López and Company (click ‘Related objects’)►

Ferro Torrelles, Víctor : López y Compañía, una vida de inventor, La Sota Número 44, Octubre 2015.

Willshire, W. H.: A Descriptive Catalogue of Playing and Other Cards in the British Museum, Trustees of the British Museum, 1876, reprint 1975. (Spanish 36)