The Cary Collection of Playing Cards, held at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library of

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

in the United States, is one of the most significant assemblages of materials relating to

playing card A playing card is a piece of specially prepared card stock, heavy paper, thin cardboard, plastic-coated paper, cotton-paper blend, or thin plastic that is marked with distinguishing motifs. Often the front (face) and back of each card has a fi ...

s and related ephemera in North America.Overview of Collections: Playing Cards
Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library of Yale University, USA.

Overview

The collection is comparable to card collections held by the

United States Playing Card Company The United States Playing Card Company (USPC, though also commonly known as USPCC) is a large American producer and distributor of playing cards. It was established in 1867 as Russell, Morgan & Co. and founded in its current incarnation in 1885. ...

, the

Bibliothèque nationale de France The Bibliothèque nationale de France (, 'National Library of France'; BnF) is the national library of France, located in Paris on two main sites known respectively as ''Richelieu'' and ''François-Mitterrand''. It is the national repository ...

, the Deutsches Spielkarten Museum, and the

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

. The collection lays claim to more than 2600 packs of cards, 460 sheets of uncut card papers, and 150 wood blocks for printing cards. Included in the collection are cards from all over the world, including Italy, Germany, Korea, and

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...

. In addition to the card collections themselves, other ephemera related to the act of playing card games also belong to the collection, including various rulebooks and a variety of gaming counters. The true value of the collection lies in the wisdom of its principal collector, who desired to amass a collection that reflected in some depth both standard and non-standard cards. As a result, the Cary Collection has close to, if not ''the'', greatest variety of both types of cards.

History of the collection

Although the card collection is named after Melbert B. Cary Jr., a wealthy importer, the collection actually began in 1945 with the donation of a sizeable number of cards and books from Mrs Samuel H. Fisher. Her donations were significant, spanning approximately five hundred years of the history of the playing card and reaching as far back as the 15th century. Despite Mrs Fisher's initial donation, the collection did not gain its current reputation as a premier collection until the late 1960s when Cary's widow,

Mary Flagler Cary Henry Morrison Flagler (January 2, 1830 – May 20, 1913) was an American industrialist and a founder of Standard Oil, which was first based in Ohio. He was also a key figure in the development of the Atlantic coast of Florida and founder ...

, donated the couple's collection to Yale. Since then, the collection has continued to grow due to a generous bequest that accompanied the Cary's donation and that stipulates that the money can only be used for the purchase of playing cards and related materials.

Tarot and fortune-telling cards

The Cary Collection is not merely composed of standard playing cards, but also contains tarot cards as well as cards related to cartomancy, or the divination of one's fortune based upon interpretation of various cards. The Beinecke Library guards two of the earliest still-existing

tarot The tarot (, first known as '' trionfi'' and later as ''tarocchi'' or ''tarocks'') is a pack of playing cards, used from at least the mid-15th century in various parts of Europe to play card games such as Tarocchini. From their Italian roots, ...

decks in the world, the

Visconti Visconti is a surname which may refer to: Italian noble families * Visconti of Milan, ruled Milan from 1277 to 1447 ** Visconti di Modrone, collateral branch of the Visconti of Milan * Visconti of Pisa and Sardinia, ruled Gallura in Sardinia from ...

and the Este tarot cards. Of the two, the Visconti cards are probably the best known. These cards were commissioned by the Visconti family in the mid-15th century and may be the oldest tarot card deck still in existence. The Visconti and Este tarot cards are not the only such cards in the Cary Collection. There are also French-suited animal tarots from Belgium and some Marseille-type tarots. Also included are non-tarot cartomantic decks. In 2006, the Beinecke acquired a pack of cards that were enclosed in every packet of Black Cat Virginia cigarettes, and in 2007 a deck of seventy-eight photographic tarot cards was added to the collection.

References

External links

Cary Playing Card DatabaseBeinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library Digital Collection
from th
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cary Collection Of Playing Cards Yale University Library Collections of museums in the United States Playing cards Tarotology Libraries established in 1945 1945 establishments in Connecticut