Flornoy's Dodal

[Greg Stanton]

Typeface = every letter is cut from the same pattern, though some typefaces have alternate forms and variations of some letters. Generally though, every A looks like every other A. Typefaces have unique names, which are copyrighted. Designs can be copyrighted in Europe, but not in the USA. A typeface can be cast in metal, wood, film, or exist as computer code. The sequences of letters are typed or set from a case of metal type. The word "typeface" is often confused with "font", the latter referring to a specific size and style of a given typeface.

Lettering = every letter in every instance it occurs is created by hand -- either painted or drawn, carved in wood or stone, or drawn on a computer, etc. All of the letters have slight (or even striking) variations, which makes lettering feel wonderfully irregular and vibrant. You could call lettering "type" no more than you could say "I sign my checks in Helvetica." Both statements are equally absurd.

The words on early tarots are all lettered -- and being woodblock prints, they have to be. Most modern tarot decks utilize typefaces -- and, in my opinion, suffer visually. I don't have it in my hands yet, but from what I've seen online, it looks as if JCF has lettered the titles and numbers. It doesn't appear that he used a typeface.

Also, regarding the differences between the Dussere (facsimile) and the Flornoy (restoration) -- in order to keep up production (in the 17th c), it is certain there existed several blocks for each card. Also, in woodblock printing, the back of a block is hammered down onto the paper to make the "stamp" even -- a block doesn't last long and the quality of its image degrades over time, further necessitating multiple copies of the block to be cut. As all were cut by hand, and likely by different people, variations between them are normal. Different printings of the same deck will reveal numerous differences -- in color, line weight, and even imagery. Lines will be broken and the block wears. A new block may be missing (or have added) a slight detail. In the case of the various printings of the Dodal, the lettering may be larger and differ in style. This is why handcrafted items are so delightful!

Now you know why I'm so amused by people like Jodoworsky -- who believes Strength has six toes, and these toes have special meanings known only to the mystical initiates of the Order of Toe and Finger Counters. The fact is, the guy cutting the block probably had an extra beer at lunch. However, I only see five toes on all my decks. Maybe Jodoworsky had extra beers...

 

[rox]

The "new" Dodal is indeed lettered, as were the woodblocks. This lettering is copied directly, as was the rest of the black line. In all cases, the line on our edition is exactly the line which appears on the French deck. Some of the old line is very very hard to see - in those areas, an error is conceivable, but first one would have to discern it. Maybe someday a third copy will pop up - ah!

Were there many molds engraved for each deck? It seems they took an awfully long time to engrave, so I wonder. All I know for sure is that the two existing copies are from exactly the same mold, barring 2 or 3 cards. Each inking and coloring process is unique, in a way, and makes for differences in the appearance of each deck. The colors chosen aren't the same nuance for the french and english decks. Sometimes I wonder if different stencil-sheets weren't sometimes used. But the stencil work is sloppy throughout, so its hard to tell.

Now, two decks from the same mold doesn't mean that there weren't other "copies" of that mold used to print more decks. The only trouble is, only two are left.

The Dodal hand-stencilled majors deck has a sort of typeface for the lettering.The line was originally painted as a much-enlarged card on canvas, and that typeface?/lettering? was chosen. I imagine no letter is really really alike, but that choice was regrettable - and regretted. The woodblock lettering is much more fun.

 

[Le Fanu]

I knew I wouldn't get the terminology correct... It still isn't clear in my mind, but what I mean was that the original letters (not typeface or lettering then...) look like they have the feint wobble of a human hand, the letters (not typeface or lettering....) of the Flornoy version look like a machine was used somewhere along the way...

Can a human hand draw that straight?

But I love it anyway and I'll love it even more when it is in my hand...

(ETA; I still think it's typeface because it looks standardised)

 

[Greg Stanton]

The word "typeface" means something specific, and it is a tool of the printing -- and now, design and digital media industries. If a typeface was used, it must be able to be identified (i.e. Broadway, Helvetica, Times, Goudy Oldstyle).

Even if the letters were traced on a computer using vectors, they are still considered to be lettered. It's only a typeface if you pick one from a menu (or from a type case) and start typing. The edges can be rough or smooth, it doesn't matter.

Do you sign your cheques in Helvetica?

 

[Greg Stanton]

Take a look here:

http://www.tarot-history.com/Jean-Dodal/pages/05.html

Notice how the two Es are different, and the two Ps are different? That's lettering, not type. Also, compare the A to the A in Le Bateleur -- it's considerably wider. If a typeface was used, all these letters would be standardized and look identical to each other. Like this:

LE PAPE

 

[Bertrand]

Take a look here:
http://www.tarot-history.com/Jean-Dodal/pages/05.html

Looking right now at the card I confirm that this is the hand-stencilled major Rox talked about earlier, not the version you'll get with the latest deck which is identical to the original version.

Also, in woodblock printing, the back of a block is hammered down onto the paper to make the "stamp" even

IIRC the block was in no way hammered, it was black colored (smoke black with glue), then the wet paper was stretched over the block, and to report the drawing it was rubbed with a (probably rounded) tool made of fabric or leather (called a frotton), the woodblock was called a mold (moule) and the operation was called the molding (moulage). So yes the mold was a bit stressed but not as much as if it was hammered or even pressed onto the paper, and the woodblock could have lasted for several thousands of prints at least. JP Seguin wrote in a 2004 paper that a good workman could mold two thousand and a half sheets in a thirteen hours day of work, so the mold was probably used for several hundred thousands of prints rather than barely a few thousands.

Multiple molds for the same deck may have existed to enable several workmen to do the job at the same rather than to preserve the molds - on the other hand, the need to enhance productivity for tarot decks at the time the Dodal was produced may be very arguable.

 

[Greg Stanton]

Bertrand, the method for producing the cards MAY be as you described, but it depends on the size of the sheet used (and we know at least some tarots were produced imposed on sheets), or if they were stamped individually. If they were done 2-4 up, the backs were hammered. Larger forms were produced as you describe. Unfortunately, only one book survives (that I know of, please correct me if I'm wrong) that was entirely printed, both the lettering and illustrations, using European woodblock techniques.

Early books were printed using metal type first, with woodblock illustrations added after the type had been printed (and hammered, I might add). Later, the type and illustrations were composed into one form and printed at the same time. It is believed that the Aldus Hypnerotomachia Poliphilii was produced in this way.

 

[EnriqueEnriquez]

I have been reading James Rosenquist’s recently published auto-biography. Rosenquist is one of America’s fundamental pop artists, together with Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. This is a delicious book, full of that haunting imagery that we often find in the memoirs of those who grew up in the Midwest during the 30’s. Along the book, Rosenquist talks about making a catapult whose rock ended up hitting him in the face, so he went to school for the first day with a black eye that gave him a reputation as a tough guy, or about sleeping out in the open with a troupe of sign painters, just to wake up surrounded by the clowns, elephants and workmen of a circus that settled around them during the night. One find images like this one: “My father ran a Mobil gasoline station off the highway. It was during the Depression, and the big treat for me was being able to drink the bottom half of my father five cents Coca-Cola”. What an amazing thing to read to our kids, in this time an age when hey take everything for granted!

Rosenquist started out as a sign painter. He worked here in New York for a long time, literally covering the city with gigantic advertising images, until he finally found his way into pop art, by translating the feeling and physicality of thee billboard into pieces he could exhibit at art galleries. There were a couple of phrases in the book that I found very inspiring, specially yesterday, as I was working all day with the new Jean Dodal:

“By the time I was a teenager I’d found my way out by picking up pieces here and there, like clues to a puzzle. I’d found a way of looking at the world as disconnected images brought together for an unknown purpose. Without realizing it, I deliberately sought out the incongruities that would match my memories.”

And:

“Could I have started painting in, say, 1956? The thing is, I lacked the abstract turn of mind necessary to transform the raw material into art.”

The first phrase took me straight to the very illusion of the tarot: we “pick up pieces here and there, like clues to a puzzle” and we play along a game consisting on accepting that these random images came together by “for an unknown purpose” to tell a story abut ourselves. But the game isn’t just about making up any story, because “without realizing it” we seek for these “incongruities that would match our memories”. Yesterday, for example, I saw a woman who got The Sun, The Queen of Wands and The Devil. I pointed out how The Sun shows a couple in total connection, while the Devil shows the couple’s relationship being interrupted by a third party. In the Dodal, The Queen of Wands looks very depressed, with her hair reinforcing the downward direction of her shoulders. Even when the Queen is facing us, I could intuit the heaviness of her spine, as if the poor woman didn’t have enough in her to keep a straight posture. I pointed out how the Queen despaired looking at the unavoidability of having The Sun card turned into The Devil card. My client didn’t ask any question beforehand, but she told me the cards were talking about an event that had happened the day before: the love of her life came to see her, after five years of separation, to tell her she was indeed his true love, but he must remain attached to his wife. Then he left, and the only thing my client could do was to watch him go. How can we not see this woman as the Queen of Wands once we have heard her story? There is something powerful in the illusion the tarot creates, in that we engage in this game without knowing it. We don’t have to do anything more than looking at the cards for our brain to take it from there. Yesterday morning I had a terrific moment, as I spread the whole Dodal in such a way that I could only see half of each card, the other half being covered by the card on top. As soon as I did this, I experienced a whole symphony of shapes mimicking each other. I could see so many arms suggesting all kinds of sequential motions, so many legs, and so many floral patterns mirroring all these limbs. There were horse heads -these four horses in the Dodal have an extraordinary dynamism- turning into coins, coins turning into cups... so much going on! As I have spend too many months working with the hand-stenciled versions the Noblet and the Dodal, having the pips was an extraordinary awakening. I hadn’t realized how much I had missed the Ace of Swords!

The second of Rosenquist’s phrases is less direct, but more important to me. Rosenquist’s work consist on creating huge collage-like paintings that look as sections of billboards put together. What interests him is not so much the subject in the images as their texture, so, he will paint a whole rectangle featuring macaroni and cheese side by side with a rectangle showing curls of black hair. There is a distance between a whole, functional, billboard and a composite of moments from several billboards put together. The first thing that happens in the transition from billboard to artwork is that the communicative purpose of a billboard evolves, from the specificity of its definitive purpose, featuring one single idea, to the expressive expansion of experiencing billboards. Rosenquist artwork doesn’t says ‘Eat at Joe’s’ but it takes us to the visually orgiastic experience of inhabiting a contemporary city, with its landscape of posters and murals.

Two things happen in that transition from billboard to artwork that I believe are key for understanding the experience of the tarot that interests me. First, Rosenquist’s gesture supposes to go beyond immediate purpose, beyond here and now, to see a billboard for more than what it is. This he accomplishes by letting the experiential qualities of the image to take over content. Macaroni an cheese is not macaroni and cheese anymore, but a sensuous quality of shape and color, plus the memories it elicits. In a reading, one can go beyond the iconographic qualities of an image, so, if one looks at The Devil followed by the Three of Swords, one can see the two bounded persons as these two scimitars, and the devil as the central red sword. Then, a second thing will happen: we will take a mental leap in which, by turning into a red sword, The Devil stops being a presence and becomes a sting, the pain caused by the constant reminder of that person’s presence. There we have a narrative. This mental leap is what guides the narrative in the cards beyond symbolism, into an unique experience. That is, I believe, one great advantage of working with the simpler pips of the Marseille tarot: they don’t allow you to stay at the representational level of the image, but they force you into that level of abstraction in which they exist. That’s the level of abstraction Rosenquist is talking about. Right there, when the red mouth of a cup is not a cup anymore but Death’s elbow, there is no stiffness, there is no “this means this and that means that”. You know you aren’t ‘reading by numbers’ anymore but creating something, so the tarot becomes an expressive medium for narrative articulation that manifests each time in an unique and unexpected way.

Thanks Jean-Claude and Roxanne for giving me the opportunity of experiencing all that again!

All my Best,


EE

 

[Bernice]

I think that's a resounding YAY! from Enrique to Jean-Claudes' Dodal deck release. However I also now know a lot more about pop-artist James Rosenquist......

I suppose each person experiences the images of this deck in their own unique way. Me, I like them a lot.


Bee

 

[Le Fanu]

I hadn't seen those discrepancies in the letters P & E on Le Pape. You're right Greg, they're not at all standardised.

If a typeface was used, it must be able to be identified (i.e. Broadway, Helvetica, Times, Goudy Oldstyle).

presumably the titles on the newer AG Muller/ US Games RWS deck is a typeface (I can't identify it but presumably it is identifiable)

But those differences in the letters explain it all...