OVERVIEW OF THE COLLECTIONS

PLAYING CARDS

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Research collections at the Beinecke Library have always been developed with both a fine focus and a broad view to document subjects at the core of the University's curriculum and to take into account more popular pursuits. Similarly, researchers can find the traditional formats of scholarly inquiry, books and manuscripts, stored side-by-side with items more difficult to classify. There can be no better icons for this nonstandard group of material than playing cards; they combine a format on the fringe of the printed tradition with an interest that is, for the most part, not academic in a traditional sense. The Beinecke Library has them, in spades . . . and diamonds, bells, acorns, hearts, coins, cups, and clubs.

The first major deposit of playing cards in the Yale Library was in 1945, when Mrs. Samuel H. Fisher gave her extensive collection. This group of material, which was accompanied by a small selection of books, documented five centuries of the development of the playing card, as evidenced in numerous packs and an uncut printed sheet of Florentine cards. The earliest items in this gift were engraved German cards from the fifteenth century.

The great leap forward, the acquisition that gave Yale a prominent place in the study of playing card history, occurred two decades later. Melbert B. Cary, Jr., 1916, was, by profession, an importer who indulged his passion for fine printing by establishing and running the Press of the Woolly Whale (the archives of which reside in the Beinecke Library). Another of his passions, collecting playing cards, was developed in partnership with his wife, Mary Flagler Cary. They collected together until his death in 1941, after which Mrs. Cary continued adding judiciously to the assemblage of examples from around the world. Following Mrs. Cary's death in 1967, the collection was presented to Yale, along with funds for its maintenance.

The collection is impressive by any count. It contains more than 2600 packs, 460 sheets, and 150 wood blocks for printing cards. Present are Indian cards on lacquered paper (IND 3 through 14), a Japanese pack featuring drama scenes printed on silk (JAP 72), a French pack that shows humorous society figures (FRA 242), English sets that teach the names of mythological figures (ENG 73), and Chinese packs for playing Mah-Jongg consisting of up to 142 cards (CHN 21). More than nine hundred German packs cover the range from standard printed decks used for popular card games to a handcolored set picturing characters from Der Freischutz (GER 359).

Among the unique items in the Cary Collection are two fascinating groups of remnants of early Italian tarot packs. The tarot, originally a game of uncertain origin, came to be associated with fortune-telling, or cartomancy, several centuries after its appearance in central Europe in the late fourteenth century. Of the earliest surviving examples of the tarot, perhaps the most beautiful is the Visconti tarot of about 1445 (ITA 109), handpainted and gilded cards attributed to Bonifacio Bembo. The surviving sixty-seven cards are works of art, miniature medieval portraits. The Este tarot, from around 1450 (ITA 103) present a more simple vision of the tarot trumps, indeed a variant set from those of the Visconti, including the sun, the moon, the star, and a humble fool set upon by three small figures. In contrast, the Death trump from the Visconti set is painted as riding triumphantly over a crowd of unfortunates of all ranks.

It would be a mistake to see playing cards as indicative solely of leisure pursuits. The design of cards, the characters chosen to portray kings, queens, and jacks (historical or mythical), the suits particular to specific countries and regions (diamonds and clubs in France; bells and acorns in Germany) are as much indicators of social customs and identifiers as the broadsides and books that were being produced at the same printing shops. Special, or nonstandard packs, exhibit even more evidence of historical influence. Educational packs, intended to teach young players geography or history, share the same biases as contemporary textbooks. Six English packs from around 1679 illustrate events in the Popish Plot (ENG 76 through 81). An American pack, “Army and Navy Playing Cards” from 1865 (USA 198) uses suits of Monitors, Merrimacks, Zouaves, and drummer boys. A satirical pack created by Erich Kästner and Martin Koster in 1930 (GER 404) depicts leaders of the various German political parties active in 1930, the goal of the game being to assemble a workable government coalition.

A seemingly inexhaustible amount of raw material awaits scholars researching graphic design over five centuries. Designs by such artists as Salvador Dali (FRA 353), Rockwell Kent (USA 181), Fritz Kredel (GER 356), and Pamela Colman Smith (ENG 37 and 38) grace the faces of special packs. So-called transformation packs form a curious subset in which the pips (the suit signs or icons) are incorporated as elements into a larger picture. Uncut sheets of card-backing paper have a beauty all to themselves, beyond their utilitarian intent. Associated material includes engravings, advertisements, and rules for card games.

The Cary Collection continued to grow with associated materials being acquired every year. In addition to a number of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century texts relating to the practice and legal status of cards and gaming, recent acquisitions include: a pack of late Gothic Bohemian playing cards, about 16th century; American Indian souvenir playing cards of about 1900 (each card featuring a photo of Indian life on the playing side and a colorful Indian blanket on the reverse); Jux fexirbuch oder der zauberer (a flip-book of plates in several series including playing cards, costume figures, and birds); and a cautionary tome by J. H. Green: Exposure of the Arts and Miseries of Gambling; Designed Especially as a Warning to the Youthful and Inexperienced against the Evils of that Odious and Destructive Vice , Boston: Redding & Co., 1845.

Selections from the Cary Collection were on display at Sterling Library and Beinecke Library in 1973. A four-volume catalogue of the Cary Collection was published in 1981. Citations above refer to entries in the Cary catalogue.

Other materials that make up the playing cards collection at Yale include a fine group of research material and notes about playing card history given to the Library from the estate of Boris N. Mandrovsky in 1977 and working materials for Hellmut Lehmann-Haupt's book Gutenberg and the Master of the Playing Cards , given by the author in 1966.