Each card shows music and lyrics from John Gay’s Beggar’s opera and a small standard playing card inset in the upper left corner; red suits with stencil colored pips; no tax stamp; maker’s details on king of clubs, 10 of spades and ace of hearts.
File 55 G25 S770++
Acquired June 2023
A volume of comical poems and a play, “Blue Beard”, with 22 transformation cards that illustrate the themes with humorous images of characters performing various activities. Several depict barbers and their customers or other people in the act of grooming and taking medicines, which accompany “Van Evert the or Beelzebubs Barber, V. Vanevert the Dutch Buccaneer”. The poem “The Silver Ladle” is illustrated with a card with two women in a kitchen with a tea kettle. “Bill Bolton, the weaver”, a Scottish tale, illustrated with a pen and ink drawing of a funeral procession
LWL Mss Vol. 280
Acquired August 2022
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.
Drawings Un58 no. 96
Acquired August 2022
Four drawings, each depicting a different character with their face in the form of a heart: a man drinking; a man with a pipe; a violinist; and an elegant lady.
Eleven drawings, each depicting a different character with their face in the form of a heart: a man playing a flute; a dour-looking cleryman; a coachman; a vendor wearing a turban; a man in a tricorne hat; an obese man in an armchair with medicine on a side table; a man smoking a pipe. Also two cards wtih older woman clutching a blanket around her shoulders; a pretty young women with a highly decorated hat with feathers and her hands in a muff; and, a female ballad sheet vendor.
Drawings D821 no. 1
Acquired December 2022
Printed in two columns with a woodcut at the head of each column, and playing cards surrounding text.
File 68 837 P453+
Acquired June 2021
A collection of pictorial conundrum cards from various unidentified sets of cards trimmed from larger sheets of etched images along with a single drawing signed “R. Ck.” suggesting it is his work on the largest set (incomplete) of 19 cards. The other four sets also incomplete are grouped by the similarity in style and letterforms. All cards contain a humorously named person with an image and a riddle. Presumably the sheet contained the answers to the riddles. Queen Victoria and Sir Edwin Eglinton (the Eglinton Tournament 1839) suggest the possible date of 1840.
724 820C
Acquired January 2021
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.
66 800 C766
Acquired June 2021
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.
Drawings D996 no.1
Acquired October 2021
“Satire on the election for County Durham, 14 April 1784: Sir Thomas Clavering and Sir John Upton, one headless, holding a caption labelled ‘The Irish Faction for ever’ and carrying the other, who has no feet, on his back, who says ‘I serv’d you as long as I could stand’ and carries captions lavelled ‘Coal owners Bill’ and ‘A command in India’; both seated on an ass facing left, which brays ‘Thus I go to Parliament and am not the first Ass that has farted for preferment, but this is dirty work and hard Labour’ and which has a collar labelled ‘I speak for my Master / Populus me sibilat at plaudo ipse domi’ and strips at the saddle labelled ‘Curse all Pitts / But a Coal-Pitt’; with the ass’ droppings falling on a crest with the motto ‘Diem Perdidi’; a mitre, crozier and sword and label ‘At rest’ on the ground in the centre, playing cards and papers labelled ‘Turnpike Speech / Election Speech’ to left; a milestone to right labelled ‘From Durham / T: C / J: E / 14 April 1784’.”–British Museum online catalogue.
784.00.00.80
Acquired November 2020
A set of playing cards drawn by an unidentified artist, showing caricatured figures; each vignette incorporates the formation of hearts or diamonds into the scene. Some of the cards are numbered or annotated on the backs while others show drafts of other sketches. The set contains only the red suits and with cards numbered from one to ten in each, although some numbers are missing and there are multiples of other numbers. Illustrations are also duplicated while others appear not to have been finished. There are no cards with clubs and spades. A number of the cards center on Shakespearean themes, social history and street scenes (such as courtroom drama, musicians performing, a man in the stocks and, in a few, card playing itself). Some of the scenes depicted on these cards show the more ribald, drawing from Macbeth’s Weird Sisters, Twelfth Night, King John, and The Merry Wives of Windsor; several are annotated on the reverse with lines from the plays. Falstaff is featured on several cards. Many of the cards reflect the mores of the period and the contrast between ruling passions and rules of conduct. In one, two men cast judgment upon a pregnant woman. It is annotated on the reverse with a dialogue between a Constable and a Judge. In “Village School” a schoolteacher manages to simultaneously hold a book and pinch a child’s ear (nine of hearts). Other subjects include a game of chess (five of diamonds); drinking and smoking in a pub (seven of diamonds); and “Bunbury’s Country Club” in which the artist has kept elements from the print (published circa 1788) for the six of diamonds. On one card the artist depicts a game of whist (annotated on the reverse “Can you one?”) for the ten of diamonds.
Drawings Un58 G
Acquired February 2020
