Céline Regnard

 

     Made in the Middle and Far East, playing cards were first brought to Italy, where tarot cards originated, then to Spain before arriving in France in the 14th century through the intervention of merchants and princely courts in Provence and Flanders. Although at first hand painted, from the 15th century cards were printed from wood-cuts. Their fabrication was industrialised as from the 16th century.

 Marseille became a card-making centre in 1631, when the town was granted a formal authorisation. The famous Jean Pradines and Louis Garret were Marseille's first card-makers, combining this craft with printing Indian paintings. In fact both used wooden blocks carved by the same engravers. At the end of the 17th century the Parliament of Provence passed laws regulating the activity. The Marseille card-makers wanted a guild to protect their interests, but the town's magistrates were opposed to what they saw as an attempt to create a monopoly. But the Council of State ruled in the card-makers' favour: in 1671 the tax placed on "cards, tarots and dice" was suspended, allowing trade in paper and cards to be exported abroad. Prosperity for the card-makers of Marseille seemed round the corner. But their optimism was short-lived. Soon there were new taxes, weighing heavily on the people making packs of cards. Nevertheless fabrication and export gathered speed, sometimes illegally. They ahd to wait until 1719 for the tax to be removed, giving them more freedom. At the same time the business became structured and organised with the creation of a Master Card-maker status in 1730. In the middle of the 18th century around 200 people were employed. Production rose to 914,000 packs in 1750, mainly for export (Italy and Spain and the Hispanic-American empire). But again a new tax in 1751 caused a decline.

In 1760 master engraver Nicolas Conver started his own "house", at the same date creating a series of tarot designs which became very well-known. The Conver pack, which seems not to have been the first tarot pack, became the archetype of the Marseille pack. The House of Conver became the House of Conver-Camoin when Jean-Baptiste Camoin married one of Conver's daughters. Despite doing well, on the eve of the Revolution heavy taxation brought a drop in production. The entire Marseille industry employed only 40  people, working for six different "houses". In 1807 there were 9 card-makers, then 3 in 1843 and only 2 in 1870. However, once again the Marseille industry came back. Merging companies and introducing machines to print cards enabled production to surge forward, due mainly to increased export, which got round the various taxes.

From 1878 the Marseille industry was concentrated in the House of Camoin, situated in the Rue d'Aubagne, where mechanised production was churning out  more than a million packs a year. The business flourished, moving into new markets such as Africa, beating the Italian competition. By the end of the 19th century the House of Camoin's production had tripled, making more than 3 million French packs and more than 80,000 foreign packs (Chinese, English, Spanish and Italian) in 1895. At that date Marseille produced two-thirds of French playing-cards. In 1906, during the Colonial Exhibition in Marseille, production was at its height, making 25,000 packs a day. The decline set in slowly, until the company closed in 1971. Today the Maison de Camoin et Cie, re-created as a limited liabilty company in 1997 is run by Philippe Camoin, a direct descendant who wants to preserve both the company and a culture.

 

Bibliography :

Joseph Billioud « La carte à jouer, une vieille industrie marseillaise », Marseille, n° 34, janvier-mars 1958 p. 17-24 et n°35, avril-juillet 1958 p. 4-8

« La renaissance du Tarot de Marseille », Le Figaro Magazine, septembre 1998

Xavier Daumalin, Nicolas Girard, Olivier Raveux (dir.) Du savon à la puce. L’industrie marseillaise du XVIIe siècle à nos jours, Jeanne Laffitte, 2003

http://www.camoin-cie.com/