[BaconWise] Cassandre Hermes Playing Cards

[BaconWise]

I wanted to do a not-so-brief spotlight for one of my favorite card families in playing card history: the Hermès Cassandre family.

The first version of this deck (pictures provided) was released in 1948 (77 years ago!) for Hermès and was illustrated by Ukranian-born French artist, A.M. Cassandre. The deck features custom, lively courts, custom pips, stunning Aces, two beautiful back designs (red & blue), and gold gilding. The v1 print was manufactured by Drager-Frères.

v2 came shortly on v1's heels, around 1950. The card design was mostly unchanged, aside from the index font and the Jack of Diamonds. Other minor tweaks were made to the ad card and tuckbox and the tuck design was more deeply saturated compared to the more faded look of the v1.

The third edition was released over 20 years later in the 1970s. This set was manufactured by Grimaud and featured identical face cards to the v2. Instead of two tuck boxes for this set, we can see they used only the two-deck display box. What is likely the most noticeable difference would be the card backs that feature solid red or solid blue - each with a simple, lined border.

The fourth and fifth editions are a bit of a mystery to me. Not much could be found, aside from the fact the red and blue design was released in 2018 as a gift deck for Hermès clients. Soon thereafter another colorway was released that features alternating back designs of white and red. Aside from the return of the original back design style, the v4 and v5 decks are MUCH larger than their predecessors.

It is rare that I collect iterations of decks. Usually I will avoid recolors as the deck I choose out of the variants does a good job of representing the project as a whole. The Cassandre decks sucked me in due to the rich history and the thrill of the hunt. As far as I know, there were only five designs created for Hermès but I wouldn't be too surprised to find there are more. For the time being, I can feel comfortable saying this is the only full Cassandre family I have seen in one place and it is a treasured piece of my collection.

EDIT: Not sure why it is displaying the images sideways. If you click on one, it will display properly in another window. UC doing UC things lol.

[acetofive]

Thanks for this post with a great essay. Clever two way mirroring of the courts. It is a good thing to see a family all in one place.

[Timmargh]

Wow, these are lovely!

[Strag]

Those are some VERY cool courts!

[kevork]

Funnily enough, I won an auction for V1 at 70€. The auction house sent me an invoice for 193€. I refused. V1 has my favorite courts with the full indices.

[Honeybee]

I have that sideways images problem sometimes (when I photograph with my phone?) and I find if I open them in Paint and then without even doing anything to them then save them from there, they are correctly orientated.

[brownsl]

Those are some of my favorite decks too! I have plenty of the later editions but I do not have V1 or V2. Thanks for the information!