{"id":4326,"date":"2014-05-01T09:44:59","date_gmt":"2014-05-01T13:44:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/?p=4326"},"modified":"2014-05-01T10:31:57","modified_gmt":"2014-05-01T14:31:57","slug":"playing-cards-with-the-devil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/2014\/05\/01\/playing-cards-with-the-devil\/","title":{"rendered":"Playing Cards with the Devil"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection.<\/em><\/p>\n

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The term \u201cdevil\u2019s picture books\u201d was used by the Puritans to refer to playing cards in hopes that it would prevent people from using them.\u00a0 In the book by the same name, Mrs. John King Van Rensselaer\u00a0<\/em>gives a history of playing cards, including the origins relating to the game of chess, how cards were named and explanations of traditions in different countries.\u00a0 She also explains the relationship of current card decks to the original tarot, and the way in which the suits came to be.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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Her history begins with the movement of cards from Asia to Europe and explains, \u201cThe first packs consisted of seventy-eight cards, – that is, of four suits of numeral cards; and besides these there were twenty-two emblematic picture cards, which were called Atous<\/em> or atouts<\/em>, — a word which M. Duchesne, a French writer, declares signifies \u2018above all\u2019.\u201d\u00a0 She continues on to explain the names of the suits and how the face cards came about.<\/p>\n

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Included in the book are wonderful illustrations of different types of card decks, depicting ones from all around the world.\u00a0\u00a0 Many of them are intricately designed and wouldn’t even be recognizable as playing cards today.\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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This book\u00a0The devil’s picture-books. \u00a0A history of playing cards<\/em><\/a>, by Mrs. John King Van Renssalaer…London, T.F. Unwin, 1892.\u00a0\u00a0can be retrieved from Widener Library.<\/p>\n

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Thanks to Emma Clement, Santo Domingo Library Assistant, for contributing this post.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection. The term \u201cdevil\u2019s picture books\u201d was used by the Puritans to refer to playing cards in hopes that it would prevent people from using them.\u00a0 In the book by the same name, Mrs. John King Van Rensselaer\u00a0gives a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6243,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5TUly-17M","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6243"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4326"}],"version-history":[{"count":32,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4326\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4363,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4326\/revisions\/4363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/houghtonmodern\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}