Trumps of the Bourgeois Tarot

The subjects of the trumps of Italian suited tarots have been the subject of much attention. The subjects on the french-suited counterparts have not been so well-studied. Granted, there is much diversity in French-suited tarots as a whole. But one particular variety, the  Bourgeois Tarot displays remarkable stability in the subject of the trump-cards.

 I shall thus attempt a thorough description of the trump cards. I have used three decks in my research:
1: A deck published by Grimauld of France, purchased c. 2011 ( previously featured Here)
2: A deck published by "Corfalu Kim'play", Purchased c. 2012 ( Previosuy featured Here)
3: A deck published by Modanio,

Some attempts have been made to describe the trump-cards [ https://sites.google.com/site/tacticclub/Home/introduction/l-histoire-du-tarot ( in French) and http://l-pollett.tripod.com/cards28.htm], but none of them have been extremely detailed in their descriptions. I therefore attempt to provide such a description.

No	Description of scene	Polett’s titles	Wikipedia’s titles
1	Jester and lady/ Man in frock coat talks to Perrot	Individual Foolishness	Folly, individual.
2	Girls play at skipping, dolls, etc, / Boys play at soldiers	Childhood	Childhood
3	Three women promenading in street/ Men and women loiter in park	Adolescence	Youth
4	Seated women with child on lap, girl sitting in door playing flute/Interior scene,  Two men  seated in table talking	Mature age	Maturity
5	Interior scene. Two seated women, one sewing other knitting while girl looks on. / Bearded man talks to girl, two boys playing at soldiers standing by	Elderly age	Old age
6	Reapers in field/ Interior scene, Two women seated at table drinking tea.	Morning	Morning
7	Workingmen and women resting in a field/ Interior scene, seated woman holds letter to seated man	Midday	Afternoon
8	Family scene; seated man and women with girl on knee, another girl looks on / Man accompanied by lady pianist sings to an audience	Evening	Evening
9	Man standing with one leg on rock, dog looks on/ Man enters doorway, looks furtively at another smoking, but looking other way	Nighttime	Night
10	Men breaking stones/ Shepherd sitting in field with goats	Earth and Air	Earth/air
11	Man rows woman on lake / men and women at a picnic	Water and fire	Water/ fire
12	Country dance/ Ballroom dance	Dancing	Dance
13	Rural women buying cloth at a draper’s / Urban men and women in a room (department store?)	Shopping	Shopping
14	Hunting party with dogs/ Men fishing with nets on boat, and angling	Open air	Open air
15	Man painting while girl looks on/Man take photograph of seated woman	Art	Visual arts
16	Sheep-shearing scene/  gardener waters plant while well-dressed family look on	Spring	Spring
17	Horse-racing scene / Women winnowing?	Summer	Summer
18	Market scene / Men threshing grain	Autumn	Autumn
19	Interior scene, Women spinning, man reading / Skaters	Winter	Winter
20	Men play at lawn bowling/ Men play at cards	Games	The game
21	Ballroom dance / Military parade, with jester looking on.	Collective foolishness	Folly, collective

"Cego speilkarte" (FX Schmid)

"Cego speilkarte" -- FX Schmid, 54c. ( printed c.  1975)

Here is another Tarock deck, published by FX schmid. Although I have seen many pictures of this deck ever since I started collecting, I have only recently came across one such deck on sale-- on Ebay.It is apparent that this deck is no longer printed. The present deck ( which I incline to call the "cego tarock") differs greatly from any other tarock deck.

This pattern is extremely similar to the bourgeoisie tarot.(http://anthonylesq.blogspot.sg/2012/02/french-tarot-grimand-part-i.html and http://anthonylesq.blogspot.sg/2012/02/french-tarot-grimand-part-ii.html) I shall attempt to point out the distinguishing features of this deck as I go along.

As you can see, the numbers indicating the value of the trumps are located in the centre of the cards. Likewise, the trump cards are illustrated by pastoral scenes. Note the fool ( 1st from left) He is dressed in green wearing a red hat, and playing a mandolin. This particular card is often an invaluable aid in distinguishing decks.

Here are the rest of the trumps of this deck.

 

The court cards: Note the jack of clubs ( 4th from left) he wears a shawl over his shoulder.

as you can see, the figures in this deck are rendered in a markedly different style from the other decks, with a greater use of green

Note the knight of diamonds ( 3rd from left). his back faces the viewer. This card is almost identical to the knight of diamonds in the bourgeoisie tarot

 

 

Making a tarot deck

A rather curious way of being able to produce a tarot deck without buying one is as follows.
 I quote the following instructions from the RationalWiki.

You will need two decks of 54 standard playing cards with identical backs and different faces; in the US, a Bicycle Standard or Jumbo Index deck and a Bicycle Lo-Vision four-color deck will do. (This example is based on that combination.)^[4]
Take the cards from the standard deck minus one joker (the other joker will be the Fool). Mix in the A->10 cards from the clubs (blue) and diamonds (green) from the Lo-Vision deck along with the Ace of Spades (black) and the jacks from all four suits; the clubs will be trumps 1-10, the diamonds (because a diamond's worth more than a stick) will be trumps 11-20, the big-index jacks will act as cavaliers,^[5] and the ace of spades will be trump 21. You are now ready to play any tarot game using a standard 78-card deck, and you won't have to frustrate yourself with the artsy-fartsy markings on a cartomancy deck or pay obscene shipping charges to import a playing deck from France or Italy
------------------
4- Total cost approx. US$ 7, depending on supplier
5- You could also use three decks with three different index sizes, making the cavalier-jacks the middle-size index cards, but it's probably a waste of money to tear apart a third deck just for the jacks

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Tarot#cite_ref-1

To sum it up, Here is a little table which breaks down the deck's structure
 ( the Letters in colour represent the cards of the Lo- vision deck, the "C" stands for a knight )

Tarot trump	Fool	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Replacement	Joker	A	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Tarot trump	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21
Replacement	A	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	A

....

Plain Suits (Tarot)	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	J	C	Q	K
Replacement	A	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	J Normal	J (Big in-dex)	Q	K

However, In this blogger's opinion, isn't part of the joy in playing at tarot the beauty of the cards?

[Edited 23rd Dec. 2018, to cure formatting error]