Pretty Frills
‘Pretty Frills’ playing cards promoting curtain and blind accessories.
Anyone thinking this undated pack is devoted to women’s lingerie will be disappointed. Pretty Frills is, perhaps surprisingly, the name of a company which supplies curtain and blind accessories, Roman blind kits, roller blind kits, tieback kits and other associated products. According to the box the company is based in Woolwich, London, although the current website gives the contact address as Pretty Frills Blind Company (Mactapes Ltd.), Stalybridge, Cheshire. Each card displays and item or items associated with the Company’s products: curtain hooks, cord tidies, pin hooks, cord pulls, brass rings, curtain tape etc. Unfortunately, there are no jokers (possibly removed), and the image on the card backs is repeated on the box. See the box►
Above: ‘Pretty Frills’ playing cards promoting curtain and blind accessories, UK (undated).
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.
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