Woolley & Co Transformation c.1880

Although this pack of ‘Floral Moguls’ would have been manufactured by Woolley & Co sometime between c.1870-1880, according to references on the three of diamonds the pip cards seem to have been transformed by hand using pen & ink in around 1879-80.

It is often the case that practice improves the artist’s hand who then reworks her ideas, returning to make the deck a second time: see another example here→

The Court Cards

Above: the twleve court cards, unturned, with square corners and no indices, as used between c.1865-1875. Unfortunately the ace of spades is missing but the most likely contender is here. Images courtesy Stuart McEwan. (Missing ace of spades provided by Ken Lodge).

REFERENCES

Goodall, Michael H: Minor British Playing Card Makers of the Nineteenth Century, (vol.2) Woolley & Company, Woking, 1996

Lodge, Ken: The Standard English Pattern (second revised and enlarged edition), Bungay, Suffolk, 2010

By Simon Wintle

Member since February 01, 1996

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Curator and editor of the World of Playing Cards since 1996. He is a former committee member of the IPCS and was graphics editor of The Playing-Card journal for many years. He has lived at various times in Chile, England and Wales and is currently living in Extremadura, Spain. Simon's first limited edition pack of playing cards was a replica of a seventeenth century traditional English pack, which he produced from woodblocks and stencils.