December 25

After visiting friends for a “fishy” 7 courses Christmas dinner, it’s time to get to work. Yesterday’s deck in this second lockdown series was from the 1950’s. Today we go 100 years back…. to the 1850’s.
The Daveluy company from Bruges, Belgium, had already some experience with the so-called porcelain cards (not playing cards, but cards with all sort of illustrations on them). The company started producing playing cards around 1850. This is the first edition of the “Moyen Age” (mediaeval) pattern. If you’re interested to see how this pattern has evolved over the years, see: xx-04-04
You will probably have noticed that the white still looks very fresh. That’s due to the same procedure that was used for their porcelain cards. Also remarkable is that Daveluy was one of the first manufacturers to use a background scene on the courts. These background scenes were changed in the second and later editions.
They often used embellished aces too. These sets not only mention the name of the company on the AC, but also “cartes brevetées” (patented cards) on the AS. In this first edition it is spelled incorrect as “cartes breveté”, an error that was corrected in the later editions. The deck consists of 52 cards. No joker was ever issued with this pattern.