Before you can invent playing cards you need medium

[baba-prague]

Originally Posted by Huck

.

That you tried to educate me about research in general, told me, that you haven't read very much of my around 700 posts here in the forum and that you haven't read too much of the stuff, what we create there at Trionfi.com.
.

Well I must say I had no idea until I ventured over here (helpfully I thought, duh!) to post a link to some of the material you were asking for, that you are basing your research primarily (in many areas - can't speak for all) only on what you can find via the internet and forums (I know some people here have great experience and access to great libraries of their own - but even so!) - i.e. little direct reading of print material including research papers. If I've misunderstood that, apologies, but again and again it seems to be what you are confirming. But I hope I have misunderstood this, I say that sincerely.

I am genuinely surprised that you defend this approach, as this in fact (fact, not opinion) limits available material to a huge degree. For example, I am very interested in research into fairy stories. Where would I be without reading Zipes - who has little available on the web but many books in print? If you want a tarot history related example - what are you going to find on Petr Kahout (Pierre de Lasenic, significant figure in early 20th century tarot) on the web? There are a couiple of pages that say more or less the same thing on websites. But in print there are several books by de Lasenic, and at least two books (one recent and well-researched) about him. If I only read the web stuff I could indeed conclude that work on de Lasenic and his time is very vague - but in print, it's far from vague, there is a lot of good material.

Need I go on? I'm very tempted to - to suggest that you compare what's available on the history (not myth) of Russian magic on the web - against getting access to the PhD work that's been done in recent years. No comparison.

Anyway, the examples are endless, but will become tedious to go on about here. The point is, in research as in all else "garbage in, garbage out". Unfortunately, in the end if you want good material to work with - and it's the only way if you are doing something serious - you have to find it where it is. Most of it is NOT on the web sadly, and this situation is unlikely to change for some years. Links to it often are on the web - the web is excellent for library catalogues and so on. But you can't just read the catalogues can you? - you need to read the printed material itself if you want to be able to come to any serious research answers. If you're reading just for general interest/speculation/fun or whatever, of course that's different - and there is nothing wrong with it. It has a place here too.

But if primarily relying on materials available on the public web is indeed the way you want to work, it's your choice and none of my business (well, I can certainly guarantee I won't be intervening in any more of your requests for information!). But in that case, and as a matter of courtesy, please reconsider saying sweeping things in public here about the quality of research in fields in which you've read almost none of the research - the dismissal of print researchers on your original post actually made me wince. I only replied to try to correct the mistaken impression that print research "consits of a lot of undefined statements with vague content." as you said. It just isn't so you know.

Anyway, let's all get on now with what we each think is a worthwhile use of our time.

All good wishes.

[Huck]

Originally Posted by baba-prague

Well I must say I had no idea until I ventured over here (helpfully I thought, duh!) to post a link to some of the material you were asking for, that you are basing your research primarily (in many areas - can't speak for all) only on what you can find via the internet and forums (I know some people here have great experience and access to great libraries of their own - but even so!) - i.e. little direct reading of print material including research papers. If I've misunderstood that, apologies, but again and again it seems to be what you are confirming. But I hope I have misunderstood this, I say that sincerely.

I am genuinely surprised that you defend this approach, as this in fact (fact, not opinion) limits available material to a huge degree. For example, I am very interested in research into fairy stories. Where would I be without reading Zipes - who has little available on the web but many books in print? If you want a tarot history related example - what are you going to find on Petr Kahout (Pierre de Lasenic, significant figure in early 20th century tarot) on the web? There are a couiple of pages that say more or less the same thing on websites. But in print there are several books by de Lasenic, and at least two books (one recent and well-researched) about him. If I only read the web stuff I could indeed conclude that work on de Lasenic and his time is very vague - but in print, it's far from vague, there is a lot of good material.

Need I go on? I'm very tempted to - to suggest that you compare what's available on the history (not myth) of Russian magic on the web - against getting access to the PhD work that's been done in recent years. No comparison.

Anyway, the examples are endless, but will become tedious to go on about here. The point is, in research as in all else "garbage in, garbage out". Unfortunately, in the end if you want good material to work with - and it's the only way if you are doing something serious - you have to find it where it is. Most of it is NOT on the web sadly, and this situation is unlikely to change for some years. Links to it often are on the web - the web is excellent for library catalogues and so on. But you can't just read the catalogues can you? - you need to read the printed material itself if you want to be able to come to any serious research answers. If you're reading just for general interest/speculation/fun or whatever, of course that's different - and there is nothing wrong with it. It has a place here too.

But if primarily relying on materials available on the public web is indeed the way you want to work, it's your choice and none of my business (well, I can certainly guarantee I won't be intervening in any more of your requests for information!). But in that case, and as a matter of courtesy, please reconsider saying sweeping things in public here about the quality of research in fields in which you've read almost none of the research - the dismissal of print researchers on your original post actually made me wince. I only replied to try to correct the mistaken impression that print research "consits of a lot of undefined statements with vague content." as you said. It just isn't so you know.

Anyway, let's all get on now with what we each think is a worthwhile use of our time.

All good wishes.

Well, Baba, let's talk serious ...

Let's assume, we both are researchers and we both follow a similar aim: Insight in early printing processes

You say: St Brides is a good address, there WE can get info.
I say: Okay, get it.

----------

Let's assume, I'm a researcher and you're not a researcher. I ask for general help, you've an address and say, "this address has quality and promising", I analyze on the base of reasons, that you don't understand necessarily, the suggestion is heard and noted, but in the moment not operatable and perhaps it's not necessary to follow this way and anyway, the way looks as time-consuming and perhaps totally successless (simply: I write an email and get no answer. Or worser: I write an email and I find someone, who is simply not the right person and the whole ends with writing various emails with the final result, that me in the end think, that this was rather ineffective, not only that, it was counterproductive). To see such things before is a matter of life-experience.
Nonetheless I say thanks to your suggestion and follow my own analyses and ideas.

--------

Well, perhaps that creates a differences between us:

You think, the decision between "about 1400" and "perhaps much later" for woodcut printing is a great matter, so must be looked on with greatest carefulness , securities etc. ... and could only be done after years iof studies etc.

Well, and I think, we've made a basic study on a specific topic with enough research depth (I would guess), that's origin of Tarot, and that had surprizing results and irt's rather different to that, what was before considered generally as "safe fact".
Now we naturally turn our head, what our form of result means to other connected fields, for instance woodcut theories, which is only a humble single between many others.
Naturally we're very often and perhaps nearly always in the state of the beginners and we've to adapt strange and new informations in quick time to get an impression, what's the factual situation. We've to decide, if this way or that way is promising, if a new idea has a probable chance to be correct finally.
So the whole is to us just a different context. A minor point between many others.

As you - as I assume and nearly know for sure - are not really informed, what's going on at trionfi.com, this might be all look somehow strange and surprizing to you.

But we've developed from an idea, the 5x14-theory, which was laughed at at the beginning on many sides, and we do meet nowadays only seldom somebody with this careless reaction. And if we do, then we send him/her in the djungle of trionfi.com and the opposition seldom reappears.

So we've a tradition to start from outsider opinions ... and we're used to be laughed in the beginning. ... :-) And we're somehow used, that these connected towers finally fall, of course not always, as of course we also experience, that something is well and good researched and we admire and respect this.
But often enough this is not the case.

---

So, I guess, we're in our ways unusual, but also successful. Part of our successful strategies is just to commmunicate and to invite others with their energies to participate. You said at beginning of the thread:

"I'm glad you brought this up - I tried a year or more back to begin a similar discussion about the importance of print technique in the design (I mean of the imagery) of playing cards (for example there's a good link here explaining why early woodblocks in Europe were crude http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/wdct/hd_wdct.htm). I got no response then - but it's a vital topic and should be discussed."

... so you showed interest in the theme. When you suggested a contact to St. Brides and I reacted, not with this words, but in others "Go and get it", then it was an invitation for cooperative research. But ... when your own communicative system is too complicated to understand this direct and concrete suggestion to solve a problem, anyway, then likely cooperation will become too complicated anyway later.

Or how would you see this?

From our part of the research end we've already have given a lot to the theme, much more than a simple information like "St. Brides is a good library for printing research." ... you cannot argue, if you're a researcher, that you didn't get anything.

[baba-prague]

Pardon - I do hope I misunderstood this? Okay, let's assume you are not trying to be rude and the wording is simply unfortunate...

But this isn't terribly logical - and once more, it's noticeably impolite. The simple words "please" and "thank-you" help communication, and I do wish you'd use them more often. If you're talking serious, please also talk courteous, otherwise you may well be misunderstood, and you almost certainly won't motivate people to aid you.

But for me this really is waste of time - something I'm short of right now. Please "go get" your own research. I gave you a couple of the good leads I know. I don't feel motivated - after the reaction that got (which verged on the rude, and was certainly almost comically dismissive - without even a nod of thanks) - to help you further. May I remind you?

Originally Posted by Huck

Well, online they don't offer much ...

... good, what is the evidence for woodcut engraving ca. 1400? Something what one finds nearly everywhere.

I really would be grateful if we can now draw this tedious dialogue to a close. Forgive me if I don't make further replies for now. But once more, I honestly wish you the best of luck.

I now hand this thread back to Umbrae - with sincere apologies for the intermission :-)

Oh no - hang on a minute. Just wanted to add one more thing (sorry Umbrae-friend-of-Dan) PLEASE Huck would you stop making a travesty of what I said and putting words I did not say (write) into my mouth (posts :-) ). I did NOT say it will take "years of studies" to find the exact date of the first woodblock printing. The whole point of suggesting you contact one of the best research centres in Europe for this is that maybe (with luck and a few pleases and thank-yous :-) ) that could lead you to a good, properly sourced and well-verified date quite quickly. Of course, I can't guarantee that. But this "years of research" thing - where did that idea come from? You know, there are levels of research in between being a Casubon (Middlemarch reference - sorry if it's not clear, means someone who spends years and years researching one tiny point) to just Googling around the internet.

Okaaaaaay - that's it. I'll shut up!
Umbrae-friend-of-Dan reappears from behind a tree (let's hope he's not thinking of making it into paper pulp) and asks in a whisper "is she finished yet?" Dan-friend-of-Umbrae replies, "Phew! Looks like it, tell her to go make the tea and mop up the tear pools on Firemaiden's next reading thread, that should get rid of her for a week or two".

[Fulgour]

Thank you very much baba-prague!

*

Here's a backwards looking thought, but wood-cut printing
would certainly have been introduced as a "time saver" for
repetitive work previously done by hand ~ say like drawing
individual cards... Letters were around long before printing.

And so far as that goes, if I needed a copy of a deck fast,
and my only option was to draw it by hand ~ I could do it!

[Huck]

... :-) ... "But this isn't terribly logical?"

Would you expect me to be unterribly illogical? ..likely I'm not the right address for this desire.

About the use of "please" and "thanks" ... I said my thanks long ago to you. The use of please is a little different between researchers. Either a common interests exists and it is "common", then everybody participating recognizes, that it should be done on the base of "having the same idea" ... it's not a grace or a special favour of the one side or the other, that something happens.

But you've shown your desinterests as clear as possible. We can live with such answers. Thanks.

[jmd]

Either my search skills within this Forum area have deteriorated, or I never posted something I thought I had many months ago.

It was my understanding that some of the 'poorer' quality paper and cardboard that was produced around the Lyons area between the 1100s and the 1400s was produced from a combination of old used linen (and used clothing too worn to be repaired) and fibres from a papyrus-type grass growing in the marshes on the north-east side of the city.

In addition, paper-mills also produced higher quality paper.

Of course high-quality materials were on the whole relatively expensive, but if medium-grade materials were generally available, it does not take long at all for a large sheet to be rather quickly carved up and hand-drawn with 78 (or other number!) of cards, and then cut.

Unless we are assuming a registered profession (such as later emerged in the region), cards could have been produced along with other items by various people who had the skill and time when otherwise not engaged in other employment.

[Huck]

Paper was reachable in the relevant regions in the relavant time (1370 - ). Germans "fist paper mill" was founded 1390 (likely it was not the first in Germany, but might have been the first after a longer time with no paper mill), but paper was imported from Italy and this generally even much later, when the paper mill in Nurremberg a longer time existed (likely there were also paper quality arguments, which made Italian paper being prefered).

The builders of the paper mill in Nurremberg were Italians on the commission of Ulrich Stromer, an important citizen in Nurremberg. This points out, that the qualified know-how in this time was not in Germany, although anything else indicates, that the southern part Germany became the first dominating playing card production center. Likely only possible with the woodcut invention and its use for mass-production, possibly accompanied by more tolerant card playing laws as in other locations (especially Italy).