THE DONDORF FORTUNE TELLING CARDS

image at 200%		image at 600%
	Before we start, we would like to show you the fine lithographic printing, for which the company of Bernard Dondorf was renowned. Here above is the image of a Jack of Clubs from the Fortune Telling deck Nr. 1, here below. It's shown at the actual size of the card (13). Enlarged to 200% only the breast suggests that the image was printed in lithography and we need to magnify the image to 600% before we can enjoy the fine details of the portrait and the way it was printed.

Between ca. 1873 and 1933 the company of Bernard Dondorf has printed and published a fortune telling deck in the style and method of Madame Lenormand. It was published as "Wahrsage-Karten Nr. 1". The deck comes with a small booklet in which the cards and the way to lay them are explained. This booklet exists in several languages: in German of course, but also in French, Dutch, Danish, Italian and Portuguese. As we live in the Netherlands our booklet is in Dutch. But it came in a box that also carried the title in Dutch: Waarzeg Kaarten Nr. 1. So it's likely that boxes with the mentioned languages will exist too.


variation #1 (c1873 - 1878)	variation #2 (c1878 - 1910)

In his book about the Dondorf company Franz Braun distinguishes 4 variations. The oldest one, variation #1, has the company name and place in white letters in a lilac, and later on in a dark purple or black circle. Variation #2 has a white circle with the company's name and place in black. The place is written as Francfort. In the third variation, here below, this name was replaced by Frankfurt.

Click card 1 to see # 5-12, card 2 for # 13-20, card 3 for # 20-28, card 4 for # 29-36

Franz Braun has qualified the deck here below as variation # 4 and mentions that this deck was published with texts in German, French, Danish and Dutch only. So we cannot offer you an English version here and you'll have to settle with our Dutch version of Fortune Telling deck Nr. 2. This variation # 4 was published from ca. 1878 until 1933. The name and place in the right circle are replaced by the dragon logo of the company, with the letters B and D as reference.

Click card 1 to see # 5-12, card 2 for # 13-20, card 3 for # 20-28, card 4 for # 29-36

As I had never seen one and Franz Braun didn't mention them either, I concluded here on this spot that "Neither of these decks were ever published with a booklet or texts in English.", when I wrote this article in 2008. That was until Roddy Sommerville wrote me in July 2024 that he had the Dondorf Lenormand Nr. 1 deck with a booklet in English. It was published by the International Card Co. from London E.C. (De la Rue). Roddy dates this publication as from 1910 or just before (Francfort still with a "c"). The cards have the BD initials on the backs. Roddy also referred to the WOPC site, where an article about a Dondorf Lenormand deck No. 1 publication by H.P. Gibson & Sons Ltd. appeared in 2011. The deck there doesn't have the BD initials on the backs and is dated as early 1920's. Their accompanying booklet has a similar cover and back layout as that of the International Card Co. but without Gibson's name. Leaves the question if there has ever been a publication of the Nr. 2 deck with rhymes in English?
However, not long afterwards some other versions of the Nr. 1 deck have been published in the UK too.......