Designs for Georgian playing cards

description below

Three playing cards, or transformation cards, drawn in pen and ink by an unidentified artist, showing caricatured figures using the shape of the pip, only hearts or diamonds (red watercolor) in this incomplete set. One of the cards (two hearts) features two gentlemen meeting. The other two cards (three of diamonds) feature a lady with a fan and two gentleman in one card; the other incomplete, has a lady with a fan and only one gentleman.

 

  • Title: [Designs for Georgian playing cards] [art original].
  • Production: [England], [between 1800 and 1820?]

Catalog Record

Drawings Un58 no. 96

Acquired August 2022

The academy of play

printed text

  • Author: Bellecour, abbé.
  • Uniform Title: [Academie universelle des jeux. English]
  • Title: The academy of play : containing, a full description of, and the laws of play, now observed in the several academies of Paris … From the French of the Abbé Bellecour.
  • Publication: London : Printed for F. Newbery, the corner of St. Paul’s Church-Yaed, Ludgate-Street, [1770?]

Catalog Record

63 770 B438

Acquired November 2021

A set of conversation cards

description below

Cards for a Regency parlor game that take the form of question and answer. The cards printed in black are questions from a man to a woman, her replies are the red printed set.

  • Title: [A set of conversation cards].
  • Publication: [England] : [publisher not identified], [ca. 1800]

Catalog Record

66 800 C766

Acquired June 2021

The city dispute, or, Milk Street in an uproar

description below

description below

A “line and dot” series of caricatures featuring scenes with stick figures (or “pin men”), both male and female, engaged in some form of public violence, arranged in two rows, each grouping individually titled. In the first row the designs are titled: “You lie, sir!”, “Proceeding to blows”, “Friends ending the dispute” and then a larger group of figures with the title “Dispute at cards: proceeding to a round game”. In the second row: “In love I pereceive [sic]”, “Prick’d to the heart. She’s gone, she’s gone!”, “Met to part no more”, “O! Thou false wretch”, “O, Sophia fairest of all women”, “How you teaze me Charles” and “I’ll seek revenge”, and a pair of designs labeled above “The effects of jealousy” and on the left “Now for the fatal blow” and “Keep your distance fellow.”

  • Title: The city dispute, or, Milk Street in an uproar [graphic].
  • Publication: [London] : Pubd. July 30, 1817, by G. Blackman Junr., 362 Oxford Strt, [30 July 1817]

Catalog Record

817.07.30.01

Acquired July 2021

A set of transformation playing cards

hand drawn playing cards

A presumably incomplete set of ten transformation playing cards, drawn by Thomas Dyer, with caricatured figures of his family as stated in a 1852 note by William Hylton Dyer Longstaffe mounted to the side of the 3 of hearts. Each figure is drawn to incorporate the shape of a heart, diamond, or spade and then tipped onto brown card. Some of the cards were copied or adapted from the Nixon-Fuller set which was published circa 1811; one, for example, shows two men seated across a table with a candle jug and pipe resting upon it, which according to Longstaffe’s note features a self-portrait by Thomas Dyer (smoking) and a portrait of his father William Charles Dyer (either snoozing or contemplating). Other cards represent a range of subjects: a courtroom drama, guardsmen, two seated women (one of whom is reading to the other), a man with a goatee beard, a clergyman holding a baby and a couple standing on either side of him, and a scene with two people playing cards. Other Longstaffe’s notes provide the provenance and custodial history of the cards; “I beg your acceptance of the enclosed. The drawings on the cards are by the late Thomas Dyer caricaturing his family. Charles Dyer to me, 27 Dec. 1852.” Another note reads: “‘I beg your acceptance of the enclosed cards, which I only found this morning. They belong to the former ones I sent. Thomas Dyer gave them to his Aunt Elizabeth, from thence they descended to my aunt Emma.’ Charles H. Dyer to me, 5 Mr. 1853.”
The set also includes a full-length portrait of a Georgian gentleman, drawn on an oval piece of paper that has been mounted to a rectangular card mount with gold paper.

  • Artist: Dyer, Thomas, approximately 1783-1852, artist.
  • Title: [A set of transformation playing cards] [art original].
  • Production: [England], [between 1815 and 1820?]

Catalog Record

Drawings D996 no.1

Acquired October 2021

The man of fashion’s manual

title pageFrontispiece shows two gentlemen with red heart-shaped faces and a red heart at their calves.

  • Title: The man of fashion’s manual : containing instructions and rules for games of chance, and charioteering. By due attention to which, (it is confidently hoped) a check will be put to a further increase of broken limbs and broken fortunes / by Sir Somebody Whipster, Knt. Member of the Legion of Honour, and of several of the first clubs in the Kingdom, &c. &c. &c.
  • Publication: [Bath, England] : Printed by Richard Cruttwell, St. James’s-Street, Bath; and sold by Wilkie and Robinson, Pater-noster-Row, London, 1809.

Catalog Record

659 809M

Acquired December 2020

The Ram’s Head Inn

men in a tavern

A scene in a tavern with a pair of inebriated men sitting on a bench in front of fireplace, smoking pipes and drinking from tankards, a dog at their feet. Another man from the next booth leans over the wall to engage them in conversation which they seem not to enjoy. In the next booth (right) a group of four men play cards while a fifth looks on.

 

  • Artist: Rowlandson, Thomas, 1756-1827, artist.
  • Title: [The Ram’s Head Inn] [art original].
  • Production: [England], [ca. 1785]

Catalog Record

Drawings R79 no.16 Box 2

Acquired August 2020

Hoyle’s card games complete

title page

  • Author: Hoyle, Edmond, 1672-1769.
  • Title: Hoyle’s card games complete : with an appendix containing his Guide to the turf.
  • Edition: The Bath edition.
  • Publication: Bath : Printed for E. Barret, Oragne Grove; sold by Dumpus, Holborn; Crawford, Cheapside; Clark, Royal-Exchange; & Flint, Burlington Arcade, 1824.

Catalog Record

63 824 H85

Acquired October 2019

 

Philosophical recreations, or, Winter amusements

  • AuthorBadcock, John, active 1816-1830.
  • TitlePhilosophical recreations, or, Winter amusements: a collection of entertaining & surprising experiments in mechanics, arithmetic, optics, hydrostatics, hydraulics, pneumatics, electricity, chemistry, magnetism, & pyrotechny, or art of making fire works, together with the wonders of the air pump, magic lanthorn, camera obscura, &c. … and a variety of tricks with cards. The whole simplified and clearly elucidated so as to suit every capacity.
  • PublishedLondon, Printed for T. Hughes [1820?]

Catalog Record

63 820 B13

Acquired March 2018

 

Over weight, or, The sinking fund, or, The downfall of faro

“Lady Buckinghamshire, enormously fat, is seated in profile to the right in an open chariot which sinks through a rectangular aperture in front of the Weigh-House, its weight being too great for the apparatus for weighing wagons. She throws up her arms and one leg, dropping her whip and reins. The hind legs of the plunging horses are in the pit; they snort wildly; the chariot and horses resemble those of Phaeton burlesqued. On the chariot is an oval escutcheon with four quarterings (cards, dice, wine-bottle, and glass) and the letter ‘B’. On the right (behind) are two street-lamps on tall pyramidal posts.”–British Museum online catalogue.

  • PrintmakerNewton, Richard, 1777-1798, printmaker, artist.
  • TitleOver weight, or, The sinking fund, or, The downfall of faro [graphic] / Rd. Newton del. et fecit.
  • PublicationLondon : Pubd. by S.W. Fores, corner of Sackville Street, March 14, 1797.

Catalog Record and Digital Collection

797.03.14.01+

Acquired November 2016