Economic factors & printing techniques in early Tarot

[moderator note: This thread properly formed posts which ensued from ihcoyc's post in the thread A look at Tarot as very Ancient.... I have edited this post solely to add this introductory note. jmd]

"I have an entirely unfounded speculation that the images in the Tarot were in fact created for some entirely different purpose --- perhaps, as printer's woodcuts for some religious text? --- and that they were re-used as parts of a card game when their original purpose fell through. "

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I do think we don't look at things enough from the production point of view. To digress slightly to give an analogy, I remember studying film under the "post-structuralist" critical approach and we were always being told about certain scenes being done in certain ways for reasons of great significance. A couple of years later when I studied with post-grad film makers (rather than film critics) I realised that the reasons were often altogether more mundane - certain scenes were shot the way they were because of the differing technologies of film in different eras. This just wasn't apparent to critics who never practised as film makers.

When I talk to my partner Alex, who is trained in very traditional print techniques, I realise he sees things in a whole different way from someone brought up with modern print methods. So I actually don't think your theory is ridiculous - we DO see bits of design repurposed all the time (design and production is expensive - you don't just throw things away, you try to re-use).

I'd love to do a bit more serious study about the technology available to the early card makers (and the economics of this - how much had to be reused to make it cost-effective?) I think we tend to forget that this was a big constraint on what could be done.

Like you say, a speculation until we have something to back it up - but an interesting one.

(by the way, when I worked in Corporate Identity I more than once saw an "identity" apparently painstakingly crafted for one client, being rejected - and immediately changed slightly and offered to another client. These things happen - and I guess they always have )

costs

baba_prague wrote: "I'd love to do a bit more serious study about the technology available to the early card makers (and the economics of this - how much had to be reused to make it cost-effective?) I think we tend to forget that this was a big constraint on what could be done."

At
http://trionfi.com/0/e/

in the documents to the name Trionfi we've a lot of prices in Ferrara. From other places we don't have early prices. I guess, the lowest price for a Trionfi deck is 3 or 4 Lira Marchesana and the highest price 14 Lira.
2 Lira Marchesana are enough to have a servant for a month it seems. So for one deck you get two servants - one month. That's expensive.

One deck is mentioned very early and much cheaper, around 1/7 or 1/8 of the above prices: these equates with the servant for a week. That's still expensive and not a cheap product.

One opinion is reported, around 1550, and this nobody says, that "Tarocchi are only for princes, barons, etc. "
In 1550 one should expect, that there is enough massproduction, also of cheaper decks - But ... this opinion is reported.

Chess was also first only a game for noble men. Around 1350 (I remember, it was in Germany)" a noble reacted surprized, finding out, that a citizen could play the game, too.

If you wanted become a knight, you must learn chess (according to a book around 1420) beside a lot of techniques, which made you and your body usable in fight.

We probably must calculate, that at the beginning the Tarot was a rather rare game. And expensive. Something for the higher circles and probably something for women. Mostly probably young women.
It's astonishing, at most pictures about card-playing (not only Tarot) in 15th century you find women.

I wonder why xylographic printing at all still was used in 1760, for ex., by Conver. At that time copperplate etching was state of the art for illustrative purposes. Engraving was developed ~1460 by Maso Finiguerra (1426-1464) of Florence, and etching further refined by Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528). It allowed for printing of much higher quality and quantities and was already widely used for maps, illustrations, and graphic art work.

Woodblock printing was at that time more common with printers of books because woodblocks could easier be combined with letter types.

So, does this support baba-praque's assumption of the production of tarot cards by printers of devotional books?

Eberhard said:

I wonder why xylographic printing at all still was used in 1760, for ex., by Conver. At that time copperplate etching was state of the art for illustrative purposes. Engraving was developed ~1460 by Maso Finiguerra (1426-1464) of Florence, and etching further refined by Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528). It allowed for printing of much higher quality and quantities and was already widely used for maps, illustrations, and graphic art work.

Woodblock printing was at that time more common with printers of books because woodblocks could easier be combined with letter types.

So, does this support baba-praque's assumption of the production of tarot cards by printers of devotional books?

Click to expand...

This is a good question I had never pondered in those terms before. My initial ad hoc response would be that this card-maker either wanted an antique-looking product, or used very old blocks for a long time, or both. The Mitelli tarocco bolognese, from around 1660, is engraved, while French tarots from Catelin Geoffrey (1557) to the Anonymous Parisian tarot in the early 17th century, to Conver, used woodblocks.

It might be helpful to ask Camoin, a descendant of Conver. But of course, he has a vested interest.

I believe it is correct that the same people who made woodblock books made cards also, but this is later than the earliest tarots, or trionfi - the earliest painted tarots pre-date the earliest woodblock illustrations in printed books. All indications are that the trionfi originated in a courtly milieu, either Ferrara or Milan.

Ross

Re: costs

Huck said:

We probably must calculate, that at the beginning the Tarot was a rather rare game. And expensive. Something for the higher circles and probably something for women. Mostly probably young women.
It's astonishing, at most pictures about card-playing (not only Tarot) in 15th century you find women.

Click to expand...

In support of this position, we can remeber too that Jacopo Antonio Marcello sent Filippo's trionfi to *Isabelle* de Lorraine in 1449. He expressly says that this game is for people like royalty, whose business it is to contemplate divine things and develop their minds.

We might also recall that he calls these triumphs - not exactly tarot cards - a "new Italian invention", and implies that it is Filippo Maria Visconti who invented them (i.e. came up with the idea), since he was "keenest in the invention of all the greatest things." This in 1449.

Ross

Well, to be accurate, it wasn't my assumption that cards might have been produced by makers of devotional books but ihcoyc's - and I don't think it's an assumption, more a theory that's being put forward by hcoyc. But I think it's an interesting one, and worth considering.

I think I need to find out more about both early printing methods and also economics - basically, how many cards would you get from one print block? How long would they be used? How much re-use and re-purposing might go on? (I know, it depends totally on the technology used of course - and this is what I feel I need to understand better).

This thread seems to have veered from being a bit of a rant into something very interesting. Thanks!

Cheapness seems to have definitely been a major factor in early card making. The chief reason why the French suits replaced the Tarot suits, which are apparently the original, inherited suits for playing cards, seems to have been that the French suited pip cards could all be stencilled, while the tarots required a separate woodblock or engraving for each card.

It would not surprise me if woodblocks were much less expensive than engravings well into the 19th century. Of course, woodblock -style- remains a feature of French-suited court cards, largely because of tradition; we could have engraphed or photographed ones now at no real further expense.

You're all talking about the printing process (woodcuts, carvings, etc. as well as the machines for pressing them to paper). Remember there's inks that were specially made for this too, some of them not so 'colorfast' and (most important) the paper had to be all hand made.

They apparently don' t have paper wasps in Europe, or they'd have gotten the idea of paper much earlier. Egypt used papyrus, which is beaten reeds laid crosshatched & pressed/fused into thin paper sheets--it's got a distinctive look but is brittle over time & while the surface is smooth enough to take writing & decoration, it's made for a dry climate. China used a legit 'modern' papermaking form where the wood fibers & cloth fibers were made into a form of slurry & diipped into deckles to make a page, then peeled off, had sizing added, pressed for smoothness, etc. This is the route Europe took too--the paper slurry style.

The end product was a result of different wood & fabric fibers, bleached in some cases, but all hand made. The content varied widely. There's quite a bit of info available in the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) about how to do it from scratch, and it's not as easy as you'd think. Prior to paper, you'd be looking at parchment, which is thinly shaved/ground/surface processed lamb skins.

So don't forget the paper. (Or inks). They're part of the process too and can hinder or help a project, depending on what the printers had access to, the pricing of the stuff & the interaction on the finished product.

You are right, HudsonGray, to point to the ink & paper question. Copperplate is offset printing which requires a lot more of precision and sophisticated paper whereas woodcuts could even be processed under very primitive circumstances.

I looked again into what, for ex., Albrecht Dürer did. Although he pioneered etching techniques, most of his works indeed are woodcuts. This article in German states that copperplates were mostly too expensive at that time and also not fit for mass circulation.

From Colour Block Prints (1933):

PLAYING CARDS

About the same time [~1420] playing cards began to be printed from blocks. Originally they were drawn and painted by hand, a craft largely carried on by women. The engravers of playing cards seem to have been a class apart. This was before the days of the printing press; impressions were taken from a block by rubbing. To be a printer in those days required little capital or plant. Mr. Hessels has suggested that at that time people bought engraved blocks from the engraver and printed from them as required, not purchasing ready-made printed matter as we do to-day. This primitive method of printing still obtains in Tibet. The monasteries own the blocks, and whenever a copy of a book is wanted by anyone it is printed page by page, the charge varying from 3d. to 6d. according to the size of the page. By 1440 playing cards were being coloured by stencil and the reverse of them often had diaper patterns in one colour printed on them. The playing cards were often elaborately pictorial.

an opportunity to get answers from the horse's mouth!

We're actually going on a studio visit this week to see a Czech artist who makes woodblocks. He has been working in this technique for some fifty years and is a master. People with his kind of skill are becoming very thin on the ground, and I do wonder if we will ever see their like again?

He is currently working on blocks for a deck of cards (!) - so it's a fantastic opportunity to see the technique first-hand and ask some questions. I'll report back of course, but if there is anythng in particular you'd like me to ask, please let me know in the next few days (the visit is this Thursday, 6th November).

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jmd - thanks for moving this thread - I think that's a good decision.