Samuel Singer History of Playing Cards

jmd

Thank you kwaw!

An invaluable reverence to add :)
 

le pendu

Thanks Kwaw!

What a great resource!

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Now if they'd just publish "The Game of Tarot" as a PDF!

Books with a small market. I wonder if that is how they'll be available someday? I'd pay money to download PDFs of several similar, out of print books. If we can't get the publishers to do another run, maybe in the future they'll do something like this? Or maybe those "publish on demand" houses would be another option.

The Game of Tarot, used, starts for $300. That's ridiculous.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0715610147/
 

Melanchollic

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Satori

Could this be made into a sticky so that we can find this again easily??? Many thanks kwaw.
 

jmd

Just goes to show, Huck, how easy it is to miss some of the wonderful information your site has brought all of us!
 

kwaw

kwaw said:
of a 15th century 5x14 pack (that described as by Master PW at triomphi site);

According to Singer this 5x14 deck is possibly by the engraver Martin Schoen, whose brother Bartholomew was also an engraver.

According to Michael Bryan in the Dictionary of Painters and Engravers (1849), Erhard Schoen was probably related to these brothers. Erhard Schoen engraved a horoscope with figures representing the houses similar to several tarot figures.

Kwaw
 

Huck

kwaw said:
According to Singer this 5x14 deck is possibly by the engraver Martin Schoen, whose brother Bartholomew was also an engraver.

According to Michael Bryan in the Dictionary of Painters and Engravers (1849), Erhard Schoen was probably related to these brothers. Erhard Schoen engraved a horoscope with figures representing the houses similar to several tarot figures.

Kwaw

This seems to be an older speculation, which was overcome by later research. The relevant deck is the deck of Master PW ...

http://trionfi.com/0/j/d/masterPW/

.. and a deck of Telman of Wesel, who copied Master PW, but reduced the suits and the figures.

We've a longer article to it in German ...

http://koeln-tarot/trionfi.com/
also the pictures.

It has a dedication to Cologne and Erhard Schoen was not a Cologne artist

Compare also our momentary start page:

http://trionfi.com

Funny enough: It's the oldest deck of Cologne and included parrots as suit signs. Since a few decades Cologne has real wild living parrots, which broke out of the zoological garden ca. 1970 and are doing well here in the warm Rheinland (some parks are full of them, I observed 100's or more recently), so the Master PW deck has an aspect of true divination, prophesizing parrots 500 years later .. :)

Erhard Schoen (not Martin Schoen) produced ca. 1530 really a card deck, but another (in Nuernberg, where most the nice deck of this time came from). He occasionally made socalled Calendar-Vignetten - round objects, as the round Master PW cards and the motif of these occasionally were also the motifs of his playing cards. Perhaps from this the suspicion developed, that the PW-deck was also from him. But the general reading for the moment is, that this deck is from ca. 1500, from Cologne and from Master PW. About Martin Schoen I don't know anything. In Internet I found that "Schoen Martin" (means the "nice Martin") or "Huebsch Martin" (also "nice Martin") was a second name for Martin Schongauer, who was earlier (before Dürer) and not contemporary to Erhard Schoen. Naturally the engraver theories develop with the times, now we're 190 years after Singer.

http://concise.britannica.com/ebc/article-9066203/Martin-Schongauer
 

kwaw

Huck said:
This seems to be an older speculation, which was overcome by later research.

Certainly there are other authorities who disagree with Singer’s attribution to Martin Schoen (Schongaur). And one is more inclined to favour more upto date research.

He first references the deck on p.45

“Among other very curious Cards in the collection of Mr. Douce, is part of a pack of which the second plate affords specimens : the suits, five in number, are Hares, Parrots, Pinks, Roses, and Columbines: there are four figured cards to each suit, King, Queen, and two Landsknechte, or Knaves; one probably intended for the King's, and the other the Queen's attendant. The numerical cards in each suit appear to have been ten in number, (1) the disposition of the objects on them, is singularly fanciful and ingenious. The animals and figures are very artist-like, and they are engraved in a superior manner. From the evidence of style, they should seem to be by Martin Schoen; and the costume of the figures, which belongs to the fifteenth century, seems conclusively to establish the fact.”

(1) BAHTSCH, in his Peintre Grareur, vol. x. p. 7O. has described sixty-five of the figured cards but as he had never seen any tens among those which had come under his cognizance, he erroneously concludes that one of the figured cards represented that number, notwithstanding Heinecken had asserted that tens were found in the pack. Bartsch does not seem to have been aware of the augmentation of the figured cards in the game of Tarocco, to which I am strongly inclined to suspect that these cards belong. It will be evident, that as there are five suits, of fourteen cards each, the number of the pack would be, when complete, seventy. They were made at Cologne, and possibly were are of as early date as 1470. Mr. Ottley is in possession of some round prints, by Martin Schoen, of the same size and style of execution; which appear to have been intended for a species of Heraldic Cards, as they consist of figures holding shields whereon are various coats of arms.

It has a dedication to Cologne and Erhard Schoen was not a Cologne artist
.

Singer himself mentions it to be from Cologne, he does not suggest it is by Erhard who, though he may have been of the same family as Martin would have been of a different generation.

Singer returns to the subject of this deck again on p.205:

“Among the earliest as well as most elegant specimens of engraved cards executed in the fifteenth century, is the pack before adverted to at page 45, as in the possession of Mr. Douce, and which are there said to resemble the works of Martin Schoen; they are interesting, not only as specimens of the ingenuity exercised in inventing varieties of ornamental cards at this period, but as examples of the high pitch of perfection to which the graphic art had attained soon after its invention. These cards consist of Five suits; hares, parrots, pinks, roses, and columbines: each suit has four figured or court cards; King, Queen, Knight, and Knave, so that a complete pack would consist of seventy cards, of which we have only seen thirty-six. Bartsch has given descriptions of such of them as he had seen, but he does not attempt to decide upon the artist who engraved them, merely calling them the work of an anonymous artist of the fifteenth century. The ingenuity displayed in the arrangement of the objects upon the numerical cards, will be sufficiently apparent from the four of parrots and nine of rabbits, which are exhibited among our specimens in the second plate of engraved cards; and an idea of the figured cards may be obtained from the Knave of rabbits and of parrots given in the same plate: four more of these cards are copied in Strutt's Sports and Pastimes, but his copies do not afford so correct a representation of the style of the engraver as the very excellent facsimiles which Mr. Swaine has executed for this work. Mr. Douce's specimens are fortunately accompanied by the frontispiece or wrapper intended for these cards, consisting of three crowns, emblematic of Cologne, and a scroll upon which we read SALVE. FELIX. COLOGNIA. so that whoever was the artist, it appears he was then resident in that city.”

Erhard Schoen (not Martin Schoen) produced ca. 1530 really a card deck, but another (in Nuernberg, where most the nice deck of this time came from). He occasionally made socalled Calendar-Vignetten - round objects, as the round Master PW cards and the motif of these occasionally were also the motifs of his playing cards. Perhaps from this the suspicion developed, that the PW-deck was also from him. But the general reading for the moment is, that this deck is from ca. 1500, from Cologne and from Master PW. About Martin Schoen I don't know anything. In Internet I found that "Schoen Martin" (means the "nice Martin") or "Huebsch Martin" (also "nice Martin") was a second name for Martin Schongauer, who was earlier (before Dürer) and not contemporary to Erhard Schoen. Naturally the engraver theories develop with the times, now we're 190 years after Singer.

Again, it is Martin Schoen, not Erhard Schoen, that Singer suggests, rightly or wrongly, to have been the artist. I merely mentioned Erhard in passing as interesting, in being of the same family [of a later generation) and also associated with playing cards and also a horoscope with figures such as can be found on tarot trumps.

Of Martin Schoen John Gould’s Biographical Dictionary of Painters, Sculptors, Engravers and Architects (1838)says:

"SCHOEN (Martin), an old German engraver, born about the year 1420. This venerable artist, who was at the same time a painter, an engraver, and a goldsmith, may be considered the father of the German school of engraving. Of his performances as a painter little is known. In the church of Le ; Hospital, at Colmar, are preserved two of his pictures, representing the Nativity, and the Adoration of the I Magi, both of which subjects he also engraved. If he was not the earliest of the German engravers, he began to practice the art when it was in its very infancy, and carried the mechanical part of it to an astonishing degree of perfection. Although his I drawing is incorrect, and his compositions partake of the stiffness and formality of the earliest works of the early German artists, his productions prove him to have possessed a fertile imagination, and exhibit both genius and judgment. In his print of the Death of the Virgin, there is a fine expression in the heads, and the accessories are finished with a beauty and delicacy of execution which has scarcely been surpassed."

Kwaw