deck-18-02

While January turned out to be a rather busy month, February was the opposite. Somehow the offer on the different eBay's and the Dutch auction site wasn't really interesting. We had hoped to see one of our Kickstarter funded projects arrive to brighten things up, but in the end the short list was really short. Only three decks to choose from. A vintage French pin-up deck, that will be added to the Pin-up & Erotica section next month, and a vintage French deck by Dieudonné, that has supplied the Joker of this Month.

The third deck was not made in France, but it has a French connection: the aces show famous buildings from Paris.

The Dieudonné deck has a standard Belgian-Genoese pattern and this deck has a standard Frankfurt pattern. We bought the Dieudonné deck for the accompanying joker and this deck because of the set of aces. Joop still has a soft spot for scenic aces, so the choice for this spot was easily made. It's not a particularly nice looking deck. There's a lot of dark shadowing in the faces, especially the kings and jacks, which makes the overall look rather dark.

The deck was made by Frommann & Morian around 1900, maybe a bit earlier. The company logo is on the JC.

The set of aces is printed in black and (little) white, so they are like the rest of the deck: a bit too dark. It means loss of fine detail on this scale. But there's more.

The aces show the famous buildings or squares of Paris: the Notre-Dame, the Arc de Triomphe, the Grand Opéra, the Place du Carrousel, the Place des Victoires, the Hôtel des Invalides, Le Parthenon and the Made......? Above we've shown an enlarged detail and it really reads "Madelaine". A rather sloppy mistake. I've given all the captions as printed and they are all in correct French. However, in French the correct name for this church is the "Madeleine".


		The anchor is the Frommann & Morian logo

Our deck consists of 32 cards and came without original wrapper or box.