Jeu des Bonnets Phrygiens
Reproduction of Jeu des Bonnets Phrygiens relating to the Phrygian cap (or liberty cap), France, 1988.
Published by Éditions Dusserre and printed by Boéchat Frères in 1988, this is a reproduction of the 1794 pack held in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. (It is also held in the Carnavalet-History of Paris Museum, Musée Carnavalet). The title relates to the Phrygian cap or bonnet (or liberty cap). This is a soft conical cap, usually red in colour, with the apex bent over, and was worn in the time of the French revolution and which came to signify freedom and the pursuit of liberty.
In this pack the kings are portrayed wearing the bonnet, the queens carry them at the end of a pikestaff, and the knaves carry muskets. The knave of spades smokes a pipe. The Phrygian bonnet also figures prominently at the head of the aces. As was common on playing cards of this period, the court cards have been renamed: the kings as “Génie de la Paix”, “Génie de la Guerre”, “Génie des Arts”, and “Génie du Commerce”; the queens as “Liberté”; the Knaves as “Egalité”. There are three information cards which serve as jokers. See the box►
By Peter Burnett
Member since July 27, 2022
I graduated in Russian and East European Studies from Birmingham University in 1969. It was as an undergraduate in Moscow in 1968 that I stumbled upon my first 3 packs of “unusual” playing cards which fired my curiosity and thence my life-long interest. I began researching and collecting cards in the early 1970s, since when I’ve acquired over 3,330 packs of non-standard cards, mainly from North America, UK and Western Europe, and of course from Russia and the former communist countries.
Following my retirement from the Bodleian Library in Dec. 2007 I took up a new role as Head of Library Development at the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP) to support library development in low-income countries. This work necessitated regular training visits to many sub-Saharan African countries and also further afield, to Vietnam, Nepal and Bangladesh – all of which provided rich opportunities to further expand my playing card collection.
Since 2019 I’ve been working part-time in the Bodleian Library where I’ve been cataloguing the bequest of the late Donald Welsh, founder of the English Playing Card Society.
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