The history of playing cards begins in China, about two thousand years ago. More precisely, the history of playing cards begins with the history of paper. When the Chinese figured out how to create paper, they kept the formula a secret for a long time. Only in a battle did the Ottoman troops manage to capture two experts who knew the formula.
Battle of Talas
After that, the formula for creating paper spread throughout the Islamic world. After only 40 years, production was established in Baghdad. However, it took tens and hundreds of years for this knowledge to reach Europe. The first paper mill appeared in England only in 1490. With the creation of paper naturally came such inventions as paper money, newspapers, books and playing cards. In general, most historians agree that playing cards first appeared in China around the IX century. However, their rules and decks have not survived.
In Europe, on the contrary, playing cards have appeared much later, for the first time about them it is mentioned only in 1731 after they became a subject of general attention in Italy, Spain, Switzerland, France and other countries. They began to be of interest in all social circles, and the authorities did not know how to deal with them.
Playing cards in Europe
In 1461, the English Parliament passed a law that allowed playing cards only on the twelve days of Christmas, forbidding it on all other occasions. When, later that century, the Church named playing cards “the devil’s picture book”, they were burned in bonfires along with books, paintings and musical instruments. However, it was impossible to stop the spread of their popularity. When the printing press was invented in the world, a new production of playing cards of a completely different level began.
Finally, the European authorities realised that it was useless to fight against playing cards. It was much easier to get additional income from them. Thus, in England, a pack of cards was taxed, and the symbol of this payment was the ace of spades. Subsequently, the “ace of spades” began to be printed separately, which was the impetus for the creation of a centralised Stamp Duty Office. Accordingly, counterfeiting was punishable by law.
Prohibition of playing cards
While playing cards were being legalised in Europe, Portuguese merchants brought them to Japan. In 1633, after the country was closed to foreigners, playing cards were also partially banned. As a result, new decks were constantly being created and banned at the same time. This continued until the restrictions were finally lifted and Japan began to adopt the Western approach to playing cards.
The original design of the cards
Of course, the design of the cards was also constantly changing. The suits of playing cards were named differently in different countries. In Spain and Italy, bowls, swords, clubs and coins prevailed, while in Germany, hearts, acorns, leaves and bells prevailed. The modern decks you are used to can be found in all of these countries. In general, modern playing card names originated in France due to simplicity. The French used black and red colours for better memorisation. They were also easy to print and sell in large quantities.
The design of playing cards
Between the 18th and 19th centuries, the images on cards lost their correct bottom and top and began to be printed twice on the same side. Prior to this, neither jacks, queens, nor kings had two heads. Because the cards were often scratched and wrinkled, opponents could easily figure out which cards the players had. Once they began to be printed twice on one side, this problem disappeared. Around the same time, small symbols of value and suit began to be printed. This way, players only needed to see the edge of the card to realise what kind of card it was. After that, in the middle of the 19th century, cards began to have “shirts” on them. Before that, the cards simply had a white background. Rounded edges also appeared, which made playing cards more difficult to bend and, therefore, more difficult to cheat.
Playing cards today
In the 1930s, a group of major card manufacturers, including the market leader, the United States Playing Card Company, decided to add another suit to the deck to make the total number of playing cards 65. The suits were also different. In the US it was a green eagle and in the UK it was a blue crown. Since customers didn’t like this idea, everyone soon reverted back to 52-card decks. However, the peak of popularity of playing cards seems to have passed.
In 1981, one survey noted that UK residents played cards 2 times a week. Today, that number is probably less, given how much entertainment, including gambling, there is in the world. However, playing cards is still considered a favourite pastime in many countries. In India, for example, a million decks of playing cards are sold every day.
History of poker
So, to begin with, we need to go back in time, 2,000 years back to ancient China. Not to the birth of playing cards, but to the birth of paper. So, paper in its modern form was first invented about 2000 years ago, and from then on it was very carefully guarded by the Chinese, almost like a state secret. It was like a secret technology.
In 751 AD, at the Battle of Talas, Islamic forces of the Ottoman Empire captured two Chinese paper manufacturers. The secret was snatched from them, and after that the secret of papermaking spread throughout the Islamic world. So, by 793 AD, paper was already being made in Baghdad. But even then, it took hundreds of years to reach Europe. In England, paper mills didn’t appear until 1494, almost 1,500 years after paper was first invented in ancient China.
Today it’s like a universal, readily available commodity, but in reality paper was an incredibly advanced technology that took nearly a millennium and a half to spread around the world from its inception. As it did, it brought with it all sorts of new technologies such as newspapers, paper currency, and of course, playing cards.
How to choose the best poker cards – what to look out for?
For example, Germany developed the four suits, hearts, acorns, bells and leaves, a system that is still used in German playing cards today. Spain developed the other four suits, coins, cups, swords and clubs. But in fact, the four suits that are used in most modern decks around the world – diamonds, clubs, hearts and spades – are actually the French system. So it is the curl, spade, rack and trefl that are the four suits that are thought to have become very popular.
The Joker in poker
One particularly heartbreaking case of playing cards being used at this time occurred in orphanages across Europe. When young parents brought their child to leave them in an orphanage, they would sometimes bring a single playing card to the door or window of the orphanage. They would tear it in half. Half they would keep for themselves and the other half they would leave for the child. That way, years later, if their lives changed and they had the means to take care of the child, to take the child in, they could bring their half. At the orphanage, their half would remain on the books. They could match them and know for sure that this is indeed the same child. This is a very powerful and little known use of a single playing card all those hundreds of years ago.
Drawings of ancient playing cards of the East
The exact origin of playing cards continues to be a matter of debate among scholars, and even the best theories are based more on conjecture than evidence. There is clear historical evidence that playing cards began appearing in Europe in the late 1300s and early 1400s. They appear to have come from somewhere in the East and may have been brought to Europe by gypsies, crusaders or traders. The general consensus is that an early form of playing cards originated somewhere in Asia. Paper is fragile and generally does not preserve well over the centuries, so there is no reliable historical evidence.
Antique playing card backdrops in Italy and Spain
In a manuscript dated 1377, the German monk Johannes of Switzerland mentions the appearance of playing cards and several different card games that could be played with them. In the 1400s, playing cards often appear alongside dice in religious sermons as examples of gambling being condemned, and there is clear evidence that a deck of 52 cards existed and was in use at this time.
The suit signs in the first European decks of the fourteenth century – swords, clubs, cups and coins – most likely originated in Italy, although some link them to the cups, coins, swords and polo sticks found on Egyptian playing cards of the Mamluk period. At any rate, it is these four suits that are still found on Italian and Spanish playing cards, and are sometimes referred to as Latin suits.
Court cards from Italian decks of the late fourteenth century usually included a mounted king, a seated and crowned queen, and a knave. The knave is a royal servant, although this character could also represent a “prince” and was later referred to as a valet to avoid confusion with the king. Spanish cards developed somewhat differently:
- court cards consisted of a king,
- a knight and a knave,
- with no queens.
Spanish decks also lacked tens, and the absence of eights and nines in the national Spanish game of ombré resulted in a deck of 40 cards.
Antique playing cards in Germany
To establish themselves as an independent card-making nation, the Germans introduced their own suits to replace the Italian suits, which reflected their interest in rural life, acorns, leaves, hearts and bells; the latter were hawk bells and a reference to the popular rural pastime of falconry. The queen was also eliminated from Italian courts and replaced by a king and two horses, an Obermann (top) and an Untermann (bottom). Meanwhile, the deuce replaced the ace as the senior card to create a 48-card deck.
Decks were customised, and suit symbols used in novelty playing cards of this era included animals, kitchen utensils and appliances, from frying pans to typographical inkwells. However, the standard Germanic suits – acorns, leaves, hearts and bells – prevailed, although in neighbouring Switzerland variants with flowers instead of leaves and shields instead of hearts were common. Germanic suits are still in use in some parts of Europe and owe their origin to this period of history.
Antique playing cards in France
In the early 15th century the French developed symbols for the four suits in use today, hearts, spades, diamonds and clubs. It is possible that clubs came from acorns and spades from the leaves of German playing cards, but they may have been developed independently.
The French also favoured using the king, queen and knave as court cards. But the real genius of the French was the division of the four suits into two red suits and two black suits, with simplified and more understandable symbols. This meant that playing cards could be made with stencils hundreds of times faster than with traditional wood-cutting and engraving techniques. For purely practical reasons, the Germans lost their former dominance of the playing card market as French decks and their suits spread throughout Europe, giving us the designs you know today.