Dresden Whist Pack

While the French pattern became simplified and became the international convention for playing card design, the Germanic traditional patterns have by and large stayed with their ornate and symbolically rich designs. This means that making a full set of 52 cards for playing Whist and Poker required the addition of new designed cards: An Ace, and lower rank cards 3,4, and 5. German and Swiss cards are usually single-headed, we have made them double-headed, and added index markers for ease of play.

We will discuss the German tradition, and we will cover the Swiss pattern in another post.

We chose the Saxon or Dresden style for completion. I has the Acorns and Leaves are joined, while the hearts and bells are discrete if overlapped. The former meant that there had to be a continuity between the two and six, and a backward conformity with the Ace. The Bells and Hearts were less problematic in figuration, but they in their turn had specific expected elaborations for the Deuces.

Here is the full component of the Leaves from our Dresden pack. We have kept the elegant Deuce, and added an ace and lower spot cards (3,4,5) to compliment the series. The Deuces have a special role in decorated card normally given to Aces in the French/International traditions, and we have kept that here. We have also added index markers for ease of play.

This is the Dresden Bells suit. Traditionally there are lovers depicted, we have added a small version of a Kolo Moser print Early Spring (Vorfrühling) The ornamentation of the three is an alternative Deuce decoration:

This is the Dresden Acorns suit suit (again, the Deuce is decorated):

And finally the Dresden Hearts (the traditional 2 cupids design by Paul Lindner):

We have made a version of the Narre (joker/fool) card by finding a pair of paper cutout clowns from a lithographic process similar to the court cards

The cards are both elegant and simple, suitable for playing both traditional Germanic games (by leaving some cards out of play) or for spending half an hour alone at Klondike or Cribbage in the company of a friend. Buy a pack printed on demand at Make Playing Cards here.

Remember to read about the Swiss Whist pack here.

We've used the Leaves and Acorns in our Grand Fenwick pack, which we shall discuss soon.