Old-time playing cards real deal
The sense of nostalgia one can get from simply looking at an object is amazing. Memories and feelings are one of the main aims of museums, achieved by preserving objects that connect us to the past and each other.
Playing cards exist in their thousands around the world in many iterations of older games. Today’s treasure is a deck of illustrated children’s cards for the game Happy Families, something I remember playing in my childhood.
This particular set dates much earlier than anything I could have gotten my little hands on. While the box and any identifying material is missing from our set, similar sets are fortunately complete with these identifying features.
In 1925, Chad Valley Games of Harborne, England, issued this new version of the Victorian game Happy Families, also known as Funny Families.
Originating as a publisher, Chad Valley Games became a leading British toy making company and even became toymakers to the Queen in the 1930s.
Artist Linda Edgerton designed much softer and more appealing illustrations for this set than the earliest versions of the 1850s.
Invented by John Jaques Junior, the first Happy Families card game was released before London’s international trade exhibition of 1851.
Advertised as a “new and most diverting game for juveniles” the earliest Jaques & Son set featured grotesque caricatures such as “Miss Silence the Usher’s Daughter” and “Mrs Bobby the Policeman’s Wife”.
Jaques of London also produced several games that have survived the century, including snap, Who Knows?, tiddlywinks and snakes and ladders.
Our Happy Families set was recently donated to Whanga¯rei Museum by Chris McEvoy. Each central illustration depicts a member of a family.
During the 20s Edgerton also illustrated children’s books, postcards and other games for Chad Valley such as their snap card set. The reverse sides are blank.
Consisting of 32 cards, there are eight individual families.
After the cards are dished out, the game works like Go Fish, with each player asking another for a particular card in order to collect a whole family.
Present are families based on regular occupations – the Golfer, the Sweetman, the Sailor, the Pierrot, the Paper Man, the Jeweller, the Fisherman and the Farmer and their wives, sons and daughters.
One family may be missing, as the original version produced by Chad Valley Games featured 40 cards.
Collectable sets of playing cards adorned with hand-painted images or movie characters became quite an industry in the 1930s-50s.
Much like cigarette cards, playing cards were affordable and transportable ways for companies to sneak more advertising into the market and increase brand loyalty.
Disney produced many collectors card sets with cartoon characters from their films, as did sports teams, newspapers and, later, Barbie.
Today, Chad Valley toys are highly collectable due to their quality and renown; if only they still produced cards that looked like this.