deck-20-08

	For us August usually was the month to plan a vacation. I had skipped this last year, for obvious reasons, but this year the Covid-19 virus canceled a booked trip to Japan in April and with all the present hot spots throughout Europe, I had to postpone a week in France too. I guess that for the coming month I'll have to put myself in quarantine, vacation wise. Instead I do daytrips here in the Netherlands, visit museums or go out to dinner with friends. Playing card wise, it was a very slow month. I visited a Dutch artist to discuss publishing a (second) deck with his artwork. For the collection I bought only 1 (one!) antique deck this month......
The Rhineland pattern is not the most exciting one and we had already found a similar Dondorf deck in November 2012. So.... why did I buy this deck?

The main reason for me was that it brought 2 features together. We already had a first edition of the Rhineland pattern from the 1870's with plain aces and we had an early 20th century version with a set of historic aces. So a first edition with these historic aces would be a good addition to the collection. And this deck had square corners.




A first edition of the Dondorf Rhineland pattern can be recognized by the use of different coloring, when compared to the later editions, but more easily by the embellished fabrics on the JH, QD and all the courts in the Clubs suit. See the detail above.

The accompanying set of aces, which is also known in later editions, shows historic scenes.


Meeting of Wellington and Blücher after the battle of Waterloo	Vienna Congress of 1814/15	Cavalry attack	Napoleon in Egypt

Attack by the Prussian army	Scene from the battle of Waterloo	Czar Peter in Holland	in exile on the Isle of St. Helena

Once the deck was bought I got a chance to take a better look at the cards and compare them with the deck in our collection. Of course I also took out the Braun catalogue nr 4 about the Dondorf company and their decks, but also the beautiful, color-illustrated book about Dondorf by Schultz & Stolzenburg. It brought some interesting observations. Interested too? ....... click HERE.

The deck consists of 52 cards.

The pattern of the backs was also used for the backs of the "Burgen" deck.