18th-century playing card recycled as a mortuary notice.
[Ephemeral printing] / [Playing card]. [Eight of Hearts]. Monsieur le Curé de l’Eglise Paroissiale de St. Nicolas en cette Ville de Bruxelles, fait avertir qu’on fera dans la dite Eglise un des Anniversaires ordonnés par feu Messire René Servais Baron de Rennette, le [22] du mois de [Avril jeudi] 17[84] à [10] heures & demie avant midi. S.l. [Brussels]: s.n., dated 1784 in manuscript. [8.4 x 6.0 cm], [1] f. on recto playing card block printed in red and on verso letterpress text. Old mend to paper flaw.
An unusual example of 18th-century ephemeral printing: This standard playing card (8 of Hearts) was repurposed by printing on its verso a letterpress announcement for commemorative mortuary ceremonies.
Early modern playing cards were often recycled as scratch paper or index cards, their ubiquity and handy size making them convenient for scribbling annotations of all sorts. Only very rarely, however, were they re-used as printing supports. Presumably this was both because the design of playing cards was an inappropriate distraction for most occasions, and the small size of the cards greatly limited the sort of printing that could be added to them.
The text on this example can be translated, “The Parish Priest of St. Nicholas Parish Church in this City of Brussels, gives notice that one of the ‘Anniversaires’ ordered by the late Mr. René Servais Baron de Rennette will be held in the said Church on the [22nd] of the month of [April Thursday] 17[84] at [10] thirty in the morning.”
These ‘Anniversaires’ were masses for the dead (chantries) or some other commemorative liturgical service financed by Baron Aimé René Servais de Rennette (1706-1780) before his death. Note that the letterpress text was set up as a form with blank spaces to be filled in by hand with exact dates and time. The card presumably would have been distributed to the family and friends of the deceased so that they would know when to attend the service. Printing the announcement as a blank form suggests that many copies must originally have been printed, but I have located no other surviving examples.
But other reprinted playing cards of this sort are known. There seems to have been a minor fad in the Flanders (mostly in Brussels) in the 1780s and 1790s for printing obituary or other mortuary announcements on the versos of playing cards. I can only imagine that the aleatory symbolism of a game of chance was seen to align well with the vagaries of death.