deck-20-05

It's been a busy month. Refurnishing the living room and the annex-kitchen took up time and energy, but also my "lockdown series" in the Kings, Queens and Jacks group on Facebook. I post a different deck there each day since April 2 and promised to do so until the lockdown was in the phase that restaurants would re-open again and I would get a decent dinner somewhere. Well, it has been decided that they could re-open on the first of June and guess who was able to reserve a table in a favorite restaurant on June 2? Right!

It was a slow month in terms of new decks for the collection. Only 3 decks came my way and it wasn't top material. I had hoped to present a very rare Cossack deck from the Donbass area here, but even a € 509 bid wasn't enough. So I went through the box with decks to process, again, and came across this deck. I had wanted to show you this before, but out of sight apparently means out of heart here too. So now that I've found it again........

There's some confusion about the title and name of the printer of this deck. According to the Segeth catalogue the deck was printed by ABO-Turk, but Jerremalm mentions Abo Kortfabrik (playing card factory). Our box lacks the top, so maybe I'm missing some info. Fortunately the date is agreed upon by all: 1941. And that date is mentioned on our box too. The official name of the deck is apparently not known either. Jerremalm refers to it as "Art Deco 1941" and Segeth as "Pelikortteja Spelkort". The latter is found on the thin sides of the box, Pelikortteja on one side and Spelkort on the other. However, I believe that it just means playing cards in Finnish and Swedish. Unless it's on the top flap, there's no apparent title printed on the box. The deck isn't found on the WWPCM or the WOPC site.

Our box does have an interesting round sticker on the front. The NSV stands for National Sozialistische Volkswolfahrt (National Socialist Peoples Welfare) and was part of the Foreign Organization (AO=Ausland Organisation) of the National Socialist German Laborers Party (NSDAP=National Sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter Partei), Finland branche. That organization was founded to publish propaganda for the conservative and alt-right ideas of the party, whose most (in)famous leader was Adolph Hitler. In 1941 Finland wasn't occupied by Germany, but had engaged in a partnership with Germany, which had lead to the stationing of German troops in Finland in the prelude of "Operation Barbarossa", the invasion of Russia by Germany, aided by Finnish troops in the northern parts.

But let's not dwell on the harsh times, during which this beautiful designed deck was conceived and published. Ali's title of "Art Deco" probably describes it the best, as the courts reflect the influence of that style, in design as well as use of colors. So....... ENJOY!








		The deck has plain aces, marked with a 1. The indices on the courts are bilingual, the ones on top are Finnish (Kuningas, Rouva, Sotamies) and beneath are the Swedish indices (Kung, Dame, Knekt). As the kings have the same index in both languages, there's only one K there.


The design on front of the box is that of the QD, but changing black for blue and leaving out the soft green makes it stronger.		On the bottom of the box is the maker's logo, which could refer to Segeth's "Turk", and the year of publication.