Antique Lenormand

[IheartTarot]

Originally Posted by Teheuti

Here's an article on the recent recreation of a 17th century Biribi game board in Finland, where people are now playing it again. Notice that cards of the 36 figures accompany the board. Really this makes so much sense - that people would have cut out the numbered pictures from a biribisso woodcut print and used them as cards.

http://www.lautapeliopas.fi/peliarvostelut/biribi/

Very interesting that it is on a 6x6 board like the Game of Hope Lenormand prototype.

This example seems to be a combination of the Game of the Goose (which traditionally has 63 positions) and Biribissi. It has a Key!

[Teheuti]

You can download a version of the game with instructions (for children - non-gambling) that explain that you print two copies of the game sheet, then cut out the images from one of the copies (into little cards). You then select a set of images on the main game board (in gambling you would put your betting chips on them) and individual cards would be drawn to see who would win. Earlier games featured a leather bag from which were drawn objects (beans?) painted with the image numbers and thus the winning pictures would be determined.

http://www.findthatfile.com/search-7...-board.pdf.htm

It's a cross between Roulette and Bingo, probably closest to Mexican Lotería.

[garmonbozia]

Very cool!

Originally Posted by IheartTarot

I also noticed several common symbols in the Italian game of Biribissi aka Biribi (a gambling board game similar to bingo and roulette), i.e. sun, moon, stars, bird, house, dog, ring, tree, snake, ship, book, tower, heart, broom. I understand that the symbols represent a person's bet, i.e. you choose a square with a symbol to bet on and hold a marker for that square in exchange for your bet on it. This game was banned due to the gambling aspect. See example board dated 17th century from Wikipedia here.

[IheartTarot]

Originally Posted by Teheuti

You can download a version of the game with instructions (for children - non-gambling) that explain that you print two copies of the game sheet, then cut out the images from one of the copies (into little cards). You then select a set of images on the main game board (in gambling you would put your betting chips on them) and individual cards would be drawn to see who would win. Earlier games featured a leather bag from which were drawn objects (beans?) painted with the image numbers and thus the winning pictures would be determined.

http://www.findthatfile.com/search-7...-board.pdf.htm

It's a cross between Roulette and Bingo, probably closest to Mexican Lotería.

Thanks for explaining how it works. I am familiar with roulette but have never played bingo or Loteria (feeling deprived ).

[IheartTarot]

This information from Wikipedia (by Michael Hurst) might help explain the reasoning behind the Lenormand/Biribissi images:

Dummett suggests that the creation of Tarot was much simpler than usually imagined.

"They wanted to design a new kind of pack with an additional set of twenty-one picture cards that would play a special, indeed a quite new, role in the game; so they selected for those cards a number of subjects, most of them entirely familiar, that would naturally come to the mind of someone at a fifteenth-century Italian court. It is rather a random selection... But of course, in a pack of cards what is essential is that each card may be instantly identified; so one does not want a large number of rather similar figures, especially before it occurred to anyone to put numerals on the trump cards for ease of identification. Certainly most of the subjects on the Tarot trumps are completely standard ones in mediaeval and Renaissance art; there seems no need of any special hypothesis to explain them."

... The approach suggested by Dummett is precisely what Renaissance game creators did repeatedly in devising board games and pastimes. Biribissi type board games and Il nobile et piacevole gioco, intitolato Il passatempo are specific examples of Italian games of the Renaissance which used image collections like that suggested by Dummett.

[Teheuti]

Isn't amazing how the information has been out there for a while and we simply overlook it? Definitely I see a relationship between Biribissi and the Lenormand cards - less so with the Tarot in that the motifs seem to be 'larger,' - more complex and philosophical. They were definitely part of the Italian culture of the 14th and early 15th century. Lenormand speaks of everyday objects and creatures - our relations on this planet, while the Tarot speaks to morality and mortality - our place in the cosmos.

[IheartTarot]

Originally Posted by Teheuti

Isn't amazing how the information has been out there for a while and we simply overlook it? Definitely I see a relationship between Biribissi and the Lenormand cards - less so with the Tarot in that the motifs seem to be 'larger,' - more complex and philosophical. They were definitely part of the Italian culture of the 14th and early 15th century. Lenormand speaks of everyday objects and creatures - our relations on this planet, while the Tarot speaks to morality and mortality - our place in the cosmos.

What I also find amazing is how much Tarot and Lenormand worlds collides, even though the images are unrelated. The Tarot historians did all the groundwork already, but did not seem to connect it to Lenormand.

[balusan]

The image of the front is very much the same indeed, the back however is plain blank, no pattern or decoration thus exists on them. card stock is thick and old.

[QaUOTE=Cerulean;3140762]Unfortunately, as I checked online at the Christie's Auction House catalog, the Lot 142 partial photograph doesn't seem to be listed. Here is the complete description as transcribed from page 113 of 2006 Historic Cards and Games: the Stuart and Marilyn Kaplan Collection: Wednesday, June 26, 2006.

The description is so like your deck, I really think yours is from the Kaplan collection.

Lot 142...(last deck listed of 7 sold together)...


circa 1900, maker unknown, 36 of 36 cards, lithography, each card is horizontally divided, the bottom half more or less corresponds to traditional Lenormand series, the top half often are engmatic, both designs are framed by planetary and zodiacal symbols, the imagery may have been inspired by cards published in Berlin by Beuckert & Radetzki in 1880, backs are dots and crescents in black, colorful tuck box flat (from another deck?), instruction sheet with losses, one card has some surface loss otherwise in generally fine condition.

The lot of 7 decks were priced together as $300-500.[/QUOTE]

[IheartTarot]

Originally Posted by balusan

The image of the front is very much the same indeed, the back however is plain blank, no pattern or decoration thus exists on them. card stock is thick and old.

Sorry balusan we got a bit carried away in your thread. I am pretty sure you have a copy of the Beuckert and Radetzki deck at the British Museum (see British Museum website, no picture online unfortunately).

[balusan]

It seems that Cerulean and others have hit the nail on the head with this great find.
Thanks for all the leads.

Originally Posted by IheartTarot

I am pretty sure you have a copy of the Beuckert and Radetzki deck that is sitting at the British Museum.