Commoners playing cards
Created by Ian Cumpstey dedicated to the common land and the countryside.
This is another pack by Cumbrian artist and designer Ian Cumpstey. The style and appearance of these cards are based on traditional German-suited playing cards, with international standard indices and pips added in the four corners for ease of use.
In the German tradition of playing cards, the pips in the suits of suits of leaves and acorns grow from a central stem. For these Commoners cards, the spades and clubs suits are drawn in this way. The hearts and diamonds suits are arranged in the manner typical of the German hearts and bells suits. All the pip cards have an individual illustration - like a fox, a rooster, a cuckoo, clouds, a mountain, and so on, which might be thought of as representing universal ideas. Much of the artwork is inspired by the local landscape, fauna and surroundings in Cumbria in the north of England.
In relation to the courts, Cumpstey has followed the German convention of pip placement for the Ober and Unter, but with male and female jacks and queens. None of the court cards in this set are obviously royal figures. Instead, they are commoners in the sense that they are using --- in one way or another --- the common land in the countryside. Such a rural rustic feel is actually typical of many German playing cards. There are two jokers and two extra information cards. See the box►



Above: Commoners playing cards created by Ian Cumpstey, printed by Cartamundi, 2020.
Reference
Much of the above description is taken from the original Kickstarter campaign website►

By Peter Burnett
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.
Related Articles

Justice playing cards
Ethical concepts in a deck produced by Riccardo Conturbia’s Passione Playing Cards Ltd.

Egyptium
“Egyptium” is a hand-illustrated deck of fantasy playing cards with artwork by Russian artist Oleg S...

Disney’s Aladdin playing cards
Characters from the 1992 Disney film Aladdin.

La Réussite (Sébastien Féraut)
Sébastien Féraut’s designs inspired by the animal kingdom for a set promoting patience games.

2011 Worshipful Company Pack
Celebrating the bicentenary of the birth of Charles Dickens, with characters adapted from drawings b...

Jockey Club de Buenos Aires
Spanish-suited pack by Chas Goodall & Son Ltd for the Jockey Club, Buenos Aires.

New interest in old games
Games once fashionable are now eclipsed by quicker gratifications.

Polygo™
Cards of irregular, four-sided shape for playing word and colour games as well as more traditional o...

Treasures from the Bodleian Library
Rare books, manuscripts, music scores, portraits, maps, gospels, chronicles and other valuable artef...

Barok
Dutch pack from the 1950s with colourful Baroque courts, reprinted in 1983.

Virgil Solis
Remarkable pack of 52 animal-suited playing-cards designed and etched by Virgil Solis.

Victorian grocer’s scale plate
Large flat plate decorated with highly coloured English cards and royal arms.

Queen of Arts
A wide variety of women artists celebrated on cards with illustrations by Laura Callaghan.

The Glasgow Pack
Issued to celebrate Glasgow’s reign as European City of Culture in 1990, with city views and works o...

Cathedrals, Abbeys & Minsters playing cards
54 pictures of different famous cathedrals, abbeys and minsters in England and Wales.

Christmas Carols
Christmas Carols playing cards illustrated by Stuart Dilks
Most Popular
Our top articles from the past 28 days