deck-20-10

This month was a busy one and most activities were playing card related. I've been busy creating a deck of cards in cooperation with a Dutch artist and getting it ready for the printer. If all goes well, the deck will be launched on November 22. It will be a limited, numbered and artist signed edition of 250 decks.
The virtual convention of the 52+Joker was a nice interruption. Saw some really good presentations and the online auctions worked well too, so..... "chapeau" for Lee Ascher ánd his staff.
I went out a few times to pick up decks that I had bought on the Dutch auction site and a few decks arrived in the mail. A nice mailbox surprise was the latest Elaine Lewis transformation deck, called "Once Upon A Time", # 21/50 and accompanied by a personal X-mas card from E.L.
But I was even more surprised by the UPS. They managed to get a US package delivered here.... in 4 days!! And the content (a win in the 52+ auction) solved my problem (two E.L. decks in a row as Deck of the Month?) in one stroke.

We had already gathered cards made of papyrus, special Nepalese paper, leather and celluloid, but this is the first aluminum deck. It's a souvenir deck of the 1904 World Fair in St. Louis. Each card shows a different building on the fair's site, so don't forget to click the aces to see the pip cards. But the back design raised the first question. Thomas Jefferson was quite dead in 1904, so what is his face doing on the backs?

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) was one of the Founding Fathers and he is seen as the spiritual father of the United States. He was the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, ratified on July 4, 1776. In itself good reasons to portray him on the backs, but his Virginia was only one of the thirteen states that signed the proclamation and there were other authors of the declaration too. So why the choice for his portrait? For the answer it is useful to know that the official name for the St. Louis World Fair was the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, which was initially to be organized in St. Louis to celebrate the centennial of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. It was the most important land purchase in the history of the USA, as it comprised more than just the present Louisiana. A territory from New Orleans in the South up to the Canadian territories in the North was acquired from the French. And guess who was responsible for this purchase?

The opening of the actual fair was delayed until April 30, 1904. Officially because the organizers wanted to allow foreign nations and other US states to participate. In the end about 50 foreign nations and 43 of the then 45 states have participated. The fair was attended by close to 20 million visitors.

It's not a happy marriage, between aluminum and a scanner.
The scanner seems to detect any 0.01 mm height difference and is merciless on slight scratches.
But as it's my scanner.........my apologies for the quality.
In real they look much nicer: flat, same tone and less visible scratches.


It's clear that aluminum isn't really fit to use for playing cards. It's a rather soft material, so it scratches easily and it's easily bend out of shape. Also the printed colours are easily worn off, just like the colours on celluloid cards. The used colours here are red and black only. Still, the way they were put together in the large suit signs has nice effects. The spades and clubs have a sort of warm glow and the red suits a sort of shadow. The lay-out of the cards is pretty simple. Because there's a printed round photograph with text centered on the card, there's only room left for the suit signs in four corners around them. There is an index (or number) with a small suit sign in the left corners, but also a full name (or number) in the middle between the large suit signs, set in a simple frame as a sort of announcement.


Although about 50 foreign nations participated, there's no trace of them on the cards. Maybe they didn't have their own building, but in this deck only general buildings, like the Palaces of Textiles or Liberal Arts, and buildings of a US state, like the New Jersey or Oklahoma Building. But if you should want to know all the ins and outs of the fair: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisiana_Purchase_Exposition and if you want to see the French deck of the World Fair of 1900 in Paris, see http://www.dxpo-playingcards.com/xpo/paris-1900/pages/paris1900-01.htm

Aluminum or aluminium?
The deck was produced by the Aluminum Manufacturing Co.
But on the carton outer box it reads aluminium playing cards.

Inside is an aluminum holder, engraved on both sides.
The flower-like ends of the side strips are solidly fixed to both sides.
The cards have to be taken out through the middle. The holder was probably closed by a ribbon.