A SECONDARY USE FOR PLAYING CARDS

          by Judy Dawson

 Many years ago when on an early visit to Gene and Ellen Hochman, Gene decided to indulge himself (and us) and show us some of his special decks of foreign, mainly European, playing cards. He had a wonderful and varied collection of cards from all over the world and we were in for a real treat.

It was such an eye opener as we were at that time, fairly new to the world of playing cards and our exposure to older European decks at that point had been mainly Dondorf or similar cards which had been imported to the USA.  We had no idea of the existence of the wonderful items we were about to see and we spent a fantastic afternoon learning and becoming much further educated.

One of the items that attracted me in particular was a small deck which featured cross-stitch patterns on each card.  I have always had an interest in early textiles and especially samplers, hooked carpets and embroideries so I spent a long time carefully examining the fascinating 32-card piquet deck.   Each card was carefully squared out for counting stitches and there was a playing card in the upper left hand corner with the rest of the card featuring an unrelated picture, all designed for cross-stitching a deck.

I have never forgotten that sweet little deck and so you can imagine my excitement when it came up for sale in Stuart Kaplan’s first Sothebys’ auction. I put my bid in early but was outbid pretty quickly. However I persevered and was eventually the delighted winner.

It came in its original box titled Cartes Brodeuses and it is in excellent condition. In fact, the delicately brightly hand colored deck is nicer than I had remembered. It is printed on light paper stock and has a plain back and we date it around 1840. We felt fortunate to have been given an opportunity to bid in that auction as a collection of any specific subject will always give the collector the greatest chance to add something wonderful to his/her collection. We went through each of the items carefully and selected those with the greatest interest to us and bid.

I might add that one of the best things about a vetted auction is that you know what you are getting vis-à-vis condition and rarity, unlike the chances one takes on eBay where the buyer has no guarantees or recourse if the item is not properly described.  Most of us have learned the hard way, some more than others and these lessons can, in some cases, be very costly for the winning bidder.

When I was doing the last CTD ephemera column on advertising cards featuring the secondary use of single playing cards it occurred to me that there were DECKS out there that also have a secondary use. My special little embroidery deck is certainly one of those!