Cartes a Jouer du Quaorzieme au Vingtieme Siecle: ... Ouvrage contenant 3200 reproductions de cartes dont 956 en couleur, 12 planches hors texte coloriees a l'aquarelle, 25 phototypies, 116 enveloppes illustrees pour jeux de cartes et 340 vignettes et vues diverses.

Paris: Librairie Hachette et cie, 1906. PLAYING CARDS. Les Cartes a Jouer du Quatorzieme au Vingtieme Siecle ... Ouvrage contenant 3200 reproductions de cartes dont 956 en couleur, 12 planches hors texte coloriees a l'aquarelle, 25 phototypies, 116 enveloppes illustrees pour jeux de cartes et 340 vignettes et vues diverses. Paris: Librairie Hachette et cie, 1906.

First edition. Two large quarto volumes (12 1/2 x 9 3/4 inches; 320 x 250 mm.). Complete with three-thousand, two-hundred reproductions of historical playing cards, nine-hundred fifty-six of which are in color; five mounted color plates; and four-hundred fifty-six intertextual illustrations. Title-pages in red and black.

Quarter nineteenth century brown calf over marbled boards, spines decorated in gilt with five raised bands. Marbled endpapers. Original front and rear wrappers bound in. Board extremities rubbed. A bit of sunning to top of front cover on Vol. 1. Overall, a very good copy.

A standard reference work on the history and art of playing cards, Henry Rene D'Allemagne's Les Cartes a Jouer du Quatorzieme au Vingtieme Siecle ("Playing Cards from the Fourteenth to Twentieth Century") is an extraordinarily exhaustive work of scholarship that covers the origins, evolution, and social aspects of playing cards and associated games from the 1370s through the first decade of the twentieth-century. The two large volumes contain thousands of magnificent illustrations, many of which are in color. In addition to over three-thousand reproductions of playing cards themselves, included among the representations are historical images of gaming as well as reproductions of nearly one-hundred fifty playing card packs.

Hargrave, p.373. Hoffman, The Playing Card, p.62.

HBS 67254.

$2,000.