Wombat's Scriptorium

A collection of images of playing cards.

This page is for images of playing cards. Playing cards have an interesting history and a wealth of variations. For example, the most common suits (at least in America), hearts, spades, clubs, diamonds, are derived from the French suits. In other countries, the objects of the suits differ, such as the acorns of the German suits, or the staves and disks of the Italian suits. If staves and disks sound familiar, you might be familiar with the tarot, which has its origins in an Italian trick-taking card game.

You can see here thumbnails or excerpts of available items. Clicking on one will bring up a picture or series of pictures of that item. Some items have many pictures, some have only one, it's sort of hit and miss. The vast majority of images on this site were culled from eBay, and thus their authenticity and dating are not 100% guaranteed. I have relied on the information provided on eBay to give dates and descriptions. Anyone who has information or knowledge about the dating or location or anything else relating to these images, please send me email.

Images being more valuable than words, here they are:

Six court cards from a 1450 Lombardy deck.

Created on Tuesday, July 10, 2001
Last Modified on Monday, October 1, 2001