Learn How Centuries of Cardmaking, Culture, and Printing Influenced the Four Familiar Suits That We Still Use Today.
Whoever gave the name to the clubs didn’t see it like that. The club is plainly a clover, with nothing of the weapon that its English name suggests. Spades are another naming oddity. The French pique means a pike, while the English spade probably came from an older word associated with swords. Gardening tools had little to do with it.
These incongruities are the signs that play has passed from country to country, picking up new images without shedding old names. The suits in deck of cards designs were not settled at first; they became established through French manufacture and foreign commerce, not through the choice of the best possible.
The Earlier Cards Had Different Pictures
The history of playing cards began in China, but there is too little information to reconstruct the packs with certainty. One of the first allusions, written in the tenth century, might refer to cards or dominoes.
In 1370, the evidence of cards began to be clear in Europe. The cups, the swords, the coins, and the batons established themselves among the European suits, especially in Italy and Spain. Cards entered Europe through the Islamic Mamluks, who were centred on Egypt.
A coin and a diamond can designate a group of cards, but the latter offers more possibilities of embellishment. The makers of the first playing cards were not, perhaps, in search of simplicity, and the cards which survive show us the extent to which they could go.
The account of playing cards on Local Histories follows that wider development. The modern pack is one branch of the story.
Four Was a Convention, Not a Requirement
A suit is the title given to the cards. The kings are of a different suit; the numbered cards are duplicated in each suit. By these distinctions, the games can rule what the players are to put down, or what the game is to be decided by.
There is no purely mechanical reason why there should be only four suits. Old European decks were made with five, six or more suits, and the number of court cards was also varied.
The early German card-makers were not lacking in ideas, as they depicted birds, flowers and hunting beasts on their cards, until the late fifteenth century, when hearts, bells, fronds and acorns established themselves as the regular four suits.
But there was no diamond suit in the German cards, and no one, at the time, would have called the German pack incomplete because of it.
Then why did the four last? We do not find a single answer. The inventors who claim to have made the four to represent the seasons, as has been said, go further than the available evidence can bear. Repetition in manufacture, a tradition of games, facilitated the conservation of these shapes.
The French Set Was Easier to Reproduce
The French playing card suits date from the fifteenth century. The names of the four suits are Hearts, Tiles, Trefoils and Pikes.
The French did not invent the heart suit. German card-makers used it long before the French symbols were in use; but the origin of each of the French ciphers is not certain, the sources which we have are too confused to make every ciphered figure’s history a matter of certainty.
A simple diamond costs less than an elaborate cup; a small clover can be recognized without a supplementary shading; but on a series of cards with numbers, a certain saving is seen.
French stencil colouring brought further economies in the 1480s, after German woodblock printing had already reduced manufacturing costs. A stencil is a template with openings cut into it, through which colour is applied, so the maker does not have to paint every symbol separately.
The origins of hearts, diamonds, clubs and spades were thus partly created in the printing office, by printers and colorists trying to sell a pack.
Red, Black and the Names Left Behind
The now-familiar red hearts and diamonds, the black clubs and spades, are the convention of the French card. The two colors are cheap, but the marks are well distinguished.
“Clubs” were associated with the older rods in spite of the clover-shaped symbol. “Spades” probably came from the name of the sword, rather than the French pike.
Other methods of indicating the suit have been retained. The Italian and Spanish cards retain the cups, the coins, the swords and the cudgels, while the German ones have retained their peculiar marks. The history of playing card suits is not a chronological progression in which every new design has superseded the old.
The four suits in a deck of cards, even on a screen, remain useful shortcuts.
Blackjack and poker are among the online casino table games listed on the Slots Paradise table games page. There is no need for a printing plate, but the legacy of the past is still in place.
FAQs About the Suits in a Deck of Cards
Why are there four suits in a standard deck?
Four became the accepted number, though in the early days there were sometimes five, six, or more. No single reason is known for why this number was adopted.
Who invented hearts, diamonds, clubs and spades?
The French card-makers developed the suits in the fifteenth century, and the name of any individual inventor is not known.
Did playing cards always have four suits?
Some old packs of cards in Europe had five, six, or more suits. Packs also differed in their court cards and overall size.
Why are hearts and diamonds red while clubs and spades are black?
This system became the standard in French decks. It suited the economy of the two-colour production; the legends ascribing to each of the colours a particular meaning are not accepted.