The premise of the current exhibition “Mirror of Humanity: Seeing Ourselves in Playing Cards” is that the imagery used on playing cards tells us a lot about how we have viewed ourselves in the past. As an example, consider the deck The Forbidden City: Pekin & Chinese Views (Los Angeles, CA: Grimes-Stassforth Stationery Co., 1901). […]
Tag: Albert Field Playing Card Collection
Thanks for entering our Playing with a Full Deck Design Contest!
As the Halloween ghouls and goblins and geese came out last night, the deadline for our design contest, Playing with a Full Deck, also came to a close. Thank you to everyone who took the time to enter! Our panel of judges will get to work and choose a winner to be announced at a […]
Contest | Playing with A Full Deck – design your own playing card!
Playing with a Full Deck is a competition for the most creative re-imagining of the standard playing card deck. The competition accompanies the Columbia University Libraries’ Rare Book & Manuscript Library exhibition, Mirror of Humanity: Seeing Ourselves in Playing Cards. The Columbia University community is invited to create a new playing card design. The contest […]
New exhibition | Mirror of Humanity: Seeing Ourselves in Playing Cards
Playing cards were once condemned as “the Devil’s picture book,” gaudy bits of pasteboard that encouraged sins such as time-wasting and gambling. Mirror of Humanity: Seeing Ourselves in Playing Cards instead approaches playing cards as mirrors which retain images of past perceptions of ourselves and others. Whether commercial products made to appeal to buyers, or […]
Collections News | Albert Field Playing Cards go online
The Columbia University Libraries has digitized cards from nearly two hundred decks of the Albert Field Collection of Playing Cards. The cards date from the 16th century through to 1801, and were mostly European – French, German, English, and Italian, though we slipped in one deck from a very new United States. […]