Bell’s Patience playing cards
Bell’s Patience playing cards, United Kingdom, 2006
This pack was manufactured by Arthur Bell & Sons in 2006 for fans of Bell’s blended Scotch whisky. Although of standard bridge size, this pack is intended for patience rather than competitive or gambling games as there are four different back designs seemingly distributed at random through the pack. The court cards superficially / loosely resemble the standard pattern, but a closer look reveals they are holding either glasses or bottles of Bell’s whisky. The eight pip of each suit carries the information “8 years in oak” and the ace of spades has a bell within the suit sign and another bell dangling from it. See the box►
Above: Bell’s Patience playing cards manufactured by Arthur Bell & Sons in 2006.
By Peter Burnett
United Kingdom • Member since July 27, 2022 • Contact
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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