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Pigments on woodblock and stencil era cards

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Pigments on woodblock and stencil era cards
« on: April 18, 2015, 10:07:14 AM »
 

Worst Bower

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I have a question regarding the limited range of colors on many card patterns that date from the woodblock and stencil era. It seems to me that manufacturers used only black and the old primary colors of red, yellow, and blue. Was it a technical limitation or an economic one? I know some inks used to be more expensive in the past but I think German-suited cards from the same era were generally more colorful because green was required for their suit of leaves.

Here are some examples of the RYB color scheme:
Paris pattern: http://www.altacarta.com/overview/francais.html
Trentine, probably the oldest Italian pattern: http://www.mydearplayingcards.com/2006_ITALIA_HTML/027_Baraja-Trentine.php
Spanish National, ancestor to most Spanish packs: http://www.mydearplayingcards.com/2006_MARRUECOS_HTML/002_Baraja-Esp.php
Swiss c. 1830: http://www.wopc.co.uk/switzerland/hurter-1.html
... and of course the English faces we are all familiar with.

So was it money, technology, or aesthetics that limited the range of colors?
 

Re: Pigments on woodblock and stencil era cards
« Reply #1 on: April 18, 2015, 01:09:41 PM »
 

TheBadJoker

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This is a pure guess. It seems to me that the more colors the greater the expense so I'm thinking $$$$.
 

Re: Pigments on woodblock and stencil era cards
« Reply #2 on: April 24, 2015, 02:25:19 PM »
 

variantventures

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In the woodblock and stencil era color was applied using stencils.  That meant more labor (cutting stencils, applying them) and longer production times (allowing additional colors to dry between applications) and that meant less profit.  There was a trade-off, however, as the manufacturers competed to produce the best (most detailed, most colorful) decks and the lowest possible cost.

Red, Yellow, Green, Blue, and Purple were popular colors from the very beginning and can be found in just about every region from the very beginning.

Beyond that you have the hand-painted cards (such as the Cloisters Deck or the Topkapi Decks) in which the artists handpainted each card and even applied gold leaf.  Such cards were very expensive, however.

So I think it's not a technical limitation but a financial constraint.
 

Re: Pigments on woodblock and stencil era cards
« Reply #3 on: April 24, 2015, 06:41:19 PM »
 

Worst Bower

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The hand-painted ones were only for the wealthy. I was mainly referring to the mass production ones used by the general population. The cheapest and most common ones seem to stick to the RYB scheme. I know certain dyes were cheaper than others, English soldiers wore red uniforms for 250 years for this reason.

BTW, are you still working on your Topkapi or minchiate decks? I was planning on making a Mamluk poker deck until I saw your posts and saw you were further ahead. I couldn't find any pictures on the internet of what the backs of the Topkapi cards are but I assume they were plain backs. Otherwise, I can't explain the atrocious blue pattern Cartamundi selected for their 1970's reproductions.
 

Re: Pigments on woodblock and stencil era cards
« Reply #4 on: April 25, 2015, 12:11:12 AM »
 

Don Boyer

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The shortest and simplest guess is that the more the colors, the more the cost.  I know that with painters that blend their own colors (be they fine artists or house painters), they will often start with primaries, so that would lead me to think the primary dyes/colors would be in the highest demand, thus the most plentiful and cheapest as a result, hence the preponderance of reds, yellows and blues used by printers with perhaps the occasional green or purple.

I know that if you see an ink used for linework that appears brown, it may well have been black at the time.  Iron was used in many early black inks, and as the iron oxidized over the years, it turned from black to brown, hence the reason so many older documents appear to be written in sepia rather than black inks.  (Oh, the things we learn on the History Channel...)
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Re: Pigments on woodblock and stencil era cards
« Reply #5 on: April 29, 2015, 04:55:58 PM »
 

variantventures

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The hand-painted ones were only for the wealthy. I was mainly referring to the mass production ones used by the general population. The cheapest and most common ones seem to stick to the RYB scheme. I know certain dyes were cheaper than others, English soldiers wore red uniforms for 250 years for this reason.

BTW, are you still working on your Topkapi or minchiate decks? I was planning on making a Mamluk poker deck until I saw your posts and saw you were further ahead. I couldn't find any pictures on the internet of what the backs of the Topkapi cards are but I assume they were plain backs. Otherwise, I can't explain the atrocious blue pattern Cartamundi selected for their 1970's reproductions.
Still working on both of those decks.  I've mostly been slowed by the fact that I've got all the artistic skill of a sloth.  I finally nailed down the designs on the Topkapi cards and I'm slowly finishing them up at the rate of about 1 per day.  Each image is approximately 1GB in size before I finally put everything together and send it to a PNG file of manageable size.  My hat is absolutely off to the professional card makers who made these decks by hand.

The backs of the Topkapi cards are indeed blank.  I agree the pattern Cartamundi went with for the backs on their reproduction of the deck is... awful.  You should go ahead and make a deck, btw.  Because I do print in demand I'm totally insulated from financial risk.  If no one buys any of my designs I still had fun making them and I've got the copies I want and no more.  Even if that wasn't the case I strongly encourage people to keep the old designs alive and enjoy the study of them and the process of re-creating them.

The Italian deck is unlikely to go to Tarot or Minchiate size because my attempts at producing the trump cards have been... horrendous.  Given that it would cost at least $600 to have a decent artist produce them for me I've pretty much given up on that idea.  I'm going to finish the court cards and just put this deck out there as an Italian deck.

There is an artist of my acquaintance who is currently working on a minchiate deck based on the Rosenwald deck.  Cardmaker Lady Heather Hall does some stunning work (really, my jealousy is absolutely ugly) and produces reasonably priced decks.  Her website is a little difficult to maneuver but she's currently got eight historical decks available to buy.  http://ladyheatherhall.com/

 

Re: Pigments on woodblock and stencil era cards
« Reply #6 on: March 08, 2016, 12:40:04 PM »
 

variantventures

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I've done a lot more research on this as I finally start to gear up to print some cards.  I've found that there's no one answer to any of the questions.  Artists used what they used for whatever reasons.  For instance, I've found organic and inorganic reds being used on mass-produced cards.  I've also found binders ranging from egg-whites, to gum-arabic (or other resins), to starch (wheatpaste).  Additionally inks could be water-based or oil-based.  The evidence suggests that professional ink-makers weren't a big thing until the 18th Century and, even then, many card-makers continued to make their own inks.

There are all sorts of recipes for various inks/paints and one find that's recently come to light is a Renaissance book in which the artist described all the colors available to artists of the time.  I think that factors that went into deciding which colors to use were:
-Economics.  What can we afford.
-Aesthetics.  What makes our product look good.
-Technology.  What are we capable of making.  What will last on the paper we're using.
 

Re: Pigments on woodblock and stencil era cards
« Reply #7 on: March 09, 2016, 12:25:51 AM »
 

Don Boyer

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I would also venture to guess that some of the cheaper, simpler face designs had such thick lines in order to disguise small alignment errors when adding the additional colors using early printing presses or wood block printing.  If the block or plate with, for example, the blue ink shifted a millimeter, give or take, when it hit the paper (or if the paper itself shifted), there was enough of a thick border to "contain" the fields of blue ink and not show the shift.  Bigger errors became obvious - but it was the best they could do at the time with the available technology for "mass-produced" playing cards.

I believe you're absolutely right about the binders.  It was likely no different to many early artists - they made their own pigments and binders for paint by experimenting and seeing what worked best, looked good and was affordable.
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