Early German playing cards

---

The “banner-10”

German and Swiss cardmakers often represented the 10 of each suit, not by a pip card with ten suit-signs, but by a card displaying a banner bearing a single suit-sign and sometimes a Roman X to indicate its rank.

The pip-cards were 2-9 plus the “banner-ten”. As there were no aces, this made a complete pack of 48 cards (the “banner-ten” is no longer used in Germany but can still be found in modern Swiss-suited packs).

Above: uncut sheet of early German-suited playing cards of rudimentary quality, c.1500, with banner-10s, wild boars on the twos, an owl on the three of acorns, a dog on the six of hearts and a lion on the nine of hearts. © The Trustees of the British Museum.

There were plenty of skilled woodcutters, working in large or small workshops; different areas developed their own local varieties which led, over time, to emerging regional patterns. A degree of standardisation began to appear in the seventeenth century.

Some modern regional patterns, even though now they may be double-ended, still contain features or idiosyncrasies inherited from earlier days. This can be observed in the Bavarian and Franconian packs, also the Ansbach and Saxon patterns, for example.

---

References

O’Donoghue, Freeman M: Catalogue of the collection of playing cards bequeathed by Lady Charlotte Schreiber, Trustees of the British Museum, London, 1901 (German 1) [digital version here]

Willshire, W. H.: A Descriptive Catalogue of Playing and Other Cards in the British Museum, Trustees of the British Museum, 1876, reprint 1975. (German 124).

Above: fragment from an uncut sheet of German-suited cards, c.1500. We can see the kings seated on thrones, and also the banner-10s instead of ten separate symbols. The overall design shows some elaboration in the costumes as new poses evolve for the figures. Source gallica.bnf.fr / Bibliothèque nationale de France • Fragment de planche de cartes d'un jeu à enseignes allemandes►

Above: fragment from an uncut sheet of German-suited cards, c.1500. Source gallica.bnf.fr / Bibliothèque nationale de France • Fragment de planche d'un jeu de cartes à enseignes allemandes, 1500-1525►