30: THE NOT-SO-MINOR CARDMAKERS OF THE 19TH CENTURY - 1

THIS PAGE IS NOW TO BE FOUND AT:  http://www.wopc.co.uk/blogs/kenlodge/the-not-so-minor-cardmakers-of-the-19th-century-part-1
THERE HAVE BEEN SOME CHANGES AND ADDITIONS.

To start with, a couple of fairly early examples:  McEvoy seems to have been taken over by Llewellyn, who in his turn was taken over by Hall.   The outlines of these courts are in black, whereas in later packs blue became the norm.

This is a very early Gibson pack with characteristics that eventually disappeared from the design, e.g. the sleeve beyond the edge of the design on the JS and the jutting-out jaw of the KC.   Gibson, however, was to become a major maker of the late 18th century (see below).

Llewellyn, c.1780

Llewellyn does not seem to have taken over McEvoy's blocks, but redrew his courts.   These were like the early Hall courts.

Mike Goodall's series of booklets on 19th century cardmakers has the wrong name:  the makers are by no means all minor.   It gives the impression that only Goodall and De La Rue were major players in what was at that time a changing industry.   It's true that those two firms were the only two to survive into the 20th century (with the exception of Woolley and James English, who finished about 1904, and Reynolds, which was owned by Goodall anyway), but that has no particular significance in the developmental history of playing cards.

[For a timeline presentation of English card-makers 1761-1905, see page 20.]

If we look at the figures of card production from 1824 (presented by Lawrence Alt in an IPCS Journal article from the 1826 report of the Commission of Enquiry into various kinds of taxation, including playing cards), we can see clearly who the big players were at the time.   The following are the official figures for the major makers, first the number of packs for the home market and second that for exportation.

Maker                    Home                 Export
CRESWICK         39,160                16,844
HALL                   37,500                31,410
HARDY               17,540                32,736
HUNT                  97,000                20,684

None of the other makers, including the emerging Goodall, produced more than 5,500 packs in that year, either home or export, while Fuller produced only 144, just for the home market.

In the catalogue of the Great Exhibition of 1851 the number of packs produced by all makers in 1850 and 1851 was the same (unusual?):  235,650 (home) and 329,888 (export), though the De La Rue archives referred to below give the export figure for 1850 as 377,306.

Going forward a few years, the picture has changed a little since 1850, but a lot since 1824.   The figures come from a hand-written document found in the De La Rue archives by Mike Goodall and reproduced in his booklet British Playing Card Manufacture in the 19th Century.  Some of the makers from the 1820s have disappeared and others have grown in size;  De La Rue has been going for 23 years.   Using the same format as above, the figures for home and export markets are given in pack numbers.   I've also given a percentage of the overall output in each category.   For each maker the figures cover the years 1855-60.


Maker                           Home                            Export
BANCKS  1855          42,200 (17.7%)                7,795 (3.1%)  (successors to HALL & HUNT)
                   1856          41,500 (14.1%)                6,000 (1.7%)
                   1857          37,200 (13.4%)                2,832 (0.5%)
                   1858          33,600 (11.3%)                3,792 (1.0%)
                   1859          33,100 (10.6%)                2,400 (0.6%)
                   1860          28,700 (9.7%)                  No figure given
        
DE LA RUE  1855      69,400 (29.2%)              54,966 (21.9%)
                       1856      93,060 (31.7%)              90,662 (26.1%)
                       1857      93,000 (33.6%)            183,392 (38.8%)
                       1858    108,150 (36.3%)            122,718 (32.4%)
                       1859    120,700 (38.5%)            131,634 (33.3%)
                       1860    117,300 (39.9%)            110,584 (36.0%)

GOODALL   1855      47,736 (20.1%)              36,178 (14.4%)
                       1856      50,500 (17.2%)              78,036 (22.4%)
                       1857      55,000 (19.9%)              82,950 (17.6%)
                       1858      58,800 (19.8%)              48,226 (12.7%)
                       1859      65,450 (20.9%)              49,603 (12.5%)
                       1860      68,000 (23.1%)              34,398 (11.2%)

REYNOLDS  1855     60,901 (25.6%)              90,372 (36.0%)
                        1856     72,860 (24.8%)            121,968 (35.1%)
                        1857     71,261 (25.7%)            175,604 (37.2%)
                        1858     68,020 (22.9%)            178,958 (47.2%)
                        1859     70,882 (22.6%)            196,374 (49.7%)
                        1860     64,576 (22.0%)            152,928 (49.8%)

The other makers are small in comparison, though Whitaker has a reasonable export trade in 1855 (17%), but this dwindles over the six years in question to 2.8% by 1859 & 1860.   The firm seems to have ceased in 1861 or 1862.   It is clear from these figures that De La Rue is the biggest mover in the home market.   He also gets an increasing share of the export trade, but not as much as Reynolds.   Clearly, both Goodall and Reynolds have expanded tremendously in the 30 years since 1824, where they hardly featured at all.   Bancks, on the other hand, is on the wane.   When you compare the combined figures of Hall (& Bancks) and Hunt from the 1820s, the antecedents of Bancks, with those of the 1850s, the decline is very striking.   Even between 1855 and 1860 the decline is obvious.   Maybe the Bancks brothers had little interest in the playing card business they inherited.   Production methods, which were static, and a lack of interest in developing back designs as a focus of marketing all suggest a lack of interest in development.   Even though Reynolds' production methods were not as advanced as those of De La Rue and certainly the later Goodall, they at least introduced a range of decorative back designs and surfaces for improving play.   Nevertheless, by the end of the 1870s both Bancks and Reynolds were well on the way out.   Neither firm introduced round corners or corner indices;  indexed cards by Reynolds & Co were manufactured by Goodall.   After the end of the Old Frizzle period new makers, such as Willis, James English and a revived Woolley, came into the market, and their more up-to-date production methods also no doubt helped to put paid to the two other ailing companies.

In 1860 the De La Rue archives give the total output as 294,000 (home) and 307,006 (export), but the reduction of the tax from 1/- to 3d gave a remarkable boost to output.   In 1866 De La Rue alone produced 299,468 packs.   I don't have figures for the other makers.   (It's interesting to compare these Victorian figures with the number of imported packs a hundred years later in 1966:  322,559 dozen packs!)   In the 1872 Kelly's Post Office Directory the number of packs produced in 1871 is given:  37,294 dozen packs (447,528 home) and 35,004 dozen packs (420,048 export).

When you look at these figures, it is not surprising that so many of the cards of the major makers have survived.   At different periods different makers were in the ascendant or on the decline;  some really were minor producers.   In general terms, however, we can give an idea of what should be considered the major manufacturers in England at different periods throughout the 19th century.   Going further back into the 18th century, some of the major makers started then, even though they may have been taken over and changed their name.   One of the biggest, Hunt, started with Blanchard, whose firm was taken over by Gibson in 1769 (and ran it with and without Gisborne);  Hunt joined the firm as a partner in 1801, then took over in 1804.   Hall took over the business of Llewellyn, probably the successor to McEvoy, in 1785;  by 1820 it had been inherited by son and son-in-law, Hall & Bancks, who were in turn uncle and father of the Bancks brothers.   By 1840 the firms of Hunt and Hall & Bancks had amalgamated, though probably produced cards under both names until the end of the decade.   In 1849 the Bancks Brothers Old Frizzle was produced and took over from the other two names.   So, in the early part of the 19th century we can say that the major makers are:  Hunt, Hall (& Bancks), Hardy and Creswick (from 1820).   By the 1850s, as we have already seen, the front-runners had changed:  De La Rue, Reynolds and Goodall, with a declining Bancks.   After 1862 Goodall makes enormous strides into the market and it and De La Rue are the clear leaders until the end of the century, by which time they are virtually the only remaining makers.

I will now illustrate a selection of the standard cards produced by each of these major makers to give a flavour of their products.   It will take more than one page to deal with them, so others will appear in due course.

GIBSON/HUNT

An early example with a Gibson & Co AS (from the Cuming Museum).

An early Hunt pack with Blanchard courts, presumably old stock from the original maker (from the Victoria & Albert Museum).

Another early pack by Hunt, c.1795, from Sylvia Mann's collection.   Note that the KH is anomalous and is probably by Hall.

A Hunt pack with 'Exportation' scratched off the AS (a tax dodge) and the JC made from a spare JH, no doubt a second-hand pack.

HB5: An unusual version of standard courts, also found with Stopforth ASs (see also page 19).

Hunt seems to have developed further the idea of smaller cards, as those above, which most other makers only produced in piquet cards.   They also produced smaller cards with full-size courts of a traditional kind (HB3).

For later examples of Hunt packs such as those below, see my contribution to the plainbacks website.

HB1 large noses          small noses              HB1.1

                                                 on queens              on queens 

Although HB1.1 is common in packs by Bancks, there is a pack on the plainbacks website with these courts and a Hunt Old Frizzle, which suggests that the first versions of their double-headed cards appeared around 1850.   How long it took to use up all the many Hunt Old Frizzles is anybody's guess.    

Continued on the next page.