Box for playing card counters

The card game l’Hombre was a fashionable pastime in the eighteenth century, and special boxes were created at the Meissen porcelain manufacture to hold the necessary counters. Five playing cards decorate the lid; the one on top, which represents the King of Hearts, is based on a French deck of cards made for the German market by Claude Valentin of Lyon about 1650. For the Ace of Spades, the painter used an original card bearing the Saxon tax stamp that was imposed on all imported playing cards. The different counters were stored in four small individual boxes, now missing.

Credit: Bequest of Irwin Untermyer, 1973