December 2023

December is always a busy month and this one was no different. Besides the usual stuff I visited the pop-up exposition in Turnhout by Stefan Lauwers and his wife Nele and I participated in the live auction of another part of the Dudley Ollis collection. I won 2 lots  with decks that have always been somewhere on my wish list. Although I have retired from collecting, I do make the occasional exception when such decks are on offer somewhere.

The decks from the auction couldn't arrive in time for this spot, so once again I had to find a nice deck, which I haven't shown anywhere on this site, from our collection. Just by chance I had to look something up in the Switzerland folder and came across this deck. Time was pressing, so a quick scan was done to see if it wasn't on the site yet, and virtually during the last day of the month I did the scans and wrote the this time short article.

The deck has a luxury pattern. It was printed in chromolithography by J. Müller & Cie and published  around 1910. The first (stencil coloured) edition of this deck dates from around 1880. This is the second version, published as Whist Nr 27. There's also a later version from the 1920's, published as Whist Nr. 28. There are a few differences between these editions, which I've illustrated at the bottom with a comparison between the jacks of clubs. The first was lithographically printed, had no indices and was stencil coloured, the second edition was printed in chromolithography, as well as the third edition, but in that edition the courts had a different colour scheme in their garments and a somewhat larger index. However, the main difference in the third edition is that the flag on the jack of clubs has changed colours. What used to be the red cross flag in the earlier editions was changed into the Swiss flag, with a white cross against a pale red background. I have no idea why. Did the Red Cross organization fell out of grace or was there a revival of Swiss nationalism after the end of WWI? Anyone with a more substantiated explanation?

Anyway...... enjoy!

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