Thoughs of a young cardmaker
à Agnès Kappler et Pablo Robledo
Pendant ma jeunesse, en tant qu?aspirant cartier ou faiseur de cartes, il a été nécessaire d’être autodidacte. Car il existait autrefois une sorte d’apprentissage chez les fabricants de cartes où l’on apprenait le métier auprès d’un maître. Les seuls artisans qui fabriquent traditionnellement des cartes sont peu nombreux dans le temps imparti. Ceux que je connais le sont : Jean-Claude Flornoy (France), Agnès Kappler (France), Bertrand Saint-Guillain (France), Sullivan Hismans (Belgique) et Pablo Robledo (Argentine). Grâce à certains artisans, j’ai appris l’existence d’articles comme celui de “Cartier” dans la célèbre Encyclopédie méthodique. Arts et métiers mécaniques de Dennis Diderot, t. 2, qui détaille le processus et les méthodes qui y sont utilisés car ils correspondent à une certaine période de temps, ainsi que six planches illustrant l’atelier et les outils nécessaires.
Of course, I speak generally when I say traditional. Over the course of time, the fabrication of cards has made use of methods that have not only differed but also evolved until the modern era. This includes, but is not limited to: cardboard making, glue making, hand painting, gilding, printmaking, stencil painting, etc. All the artisans mentioned, utilize some of these methods if not the better part among them.
With the industrialization of card making, these older methods were progressively replaced until the whole of the process was more or less mechanized. My overall intention here is to give context, likewise my intention is not to condemn the modern playing card. Rather, it is to pay homage to those that would utilize the traditional methods and to discoveries that await such a pursuit. Although, do not be misled, many of these artisans use some modern methods to facilitate their work. In days past, it would have been necessary for a group of specialized laborers (working under a maître cartier) to realize an artisanal deck of cards, which today often takes a lone artisan to learn the tasks of many. Nonetheless, this marks a return to traditional card making, cartes faites à la main or cards made by hand.
Ces artisans, comme leurs homologues plus anciens, sont à juste titre appelés “cartiers”. Beaucoup d’entre eux fabriquent des cartes à jouer, souvent en se spécialisant dans divers jeux de tarot. Les débuts du tarot, bien que souvent oubliés, dans le sens d’un jeu de cartes à jouer, ont trouvé leur sens occulte ou “caché” quelque peu discutable après la publication de deux mémoires d’Antoine Court de Gébelin et de Louis-Raphaël-Lucrèce de Fayolle, comte de Mellet dans Monde primitif, analysé et comparé avec le monde moderne , t. 8, en 1781. Après cette publication, une série sans précédent de littérature française, principalement consacrée à l’imagerie occulte du tarot, commence à voir le jour avec des personnages tels que Jean-Baptiste Alliette (Etteilla), Alphonse Louis Constant (Éliphas Lévi Zahed) et Gérard Anaclet Vincent Encausse (Papus). Ces auteurs toujours soucieux de l’imagerie de ces cartes à jouer ont négligé l’ensemble de l’art caché à la vue de tous par la pièce. C’est-à-dire les découvertes à faire dans l’art de la carte.
While personally I do not refute the preceding interpretations determining the
many meanings of the tarot’s imagery, I set my efforts to certain discoveries that one finds in the fabrication of playing cards. I say playing cards, because one does not find the construction of tarot cards by sleuthing around with it as a criterion unto itself. Tarot decks were made as playing cards by the cartiers. Their fabrication in this aspect I subscribe to Fulcanelli’s explanations of the French cathedrals in his Le Mystère des cathédrals.
When one takes a look at his cabale phonétique, often understood as la langue des oiseaux, one sees the cards revealing themselves in the hidden meanings that the wonder of the French language permits due to its phonetics. When Fulcanelli takes his principal example of art goth to explain the hidden meaning of argot, and further ties in argonaute we begin to see the mixtures of the Judeo-Christian and pagan influences render themselves understandable. It is in this manner that the imagery of the tarot may be understood in the subtleties of its influences that may often be found in the reliefs of gothic cathedrals and frescos. But first, it is necessary to understand its fabrication.
Principally, we begin with the atout, which is most simply à tout, also known as arcane majeure or triomphe. This is the macrocosm of all things that are to which all are part. In a more general sense, we come to the exoteric term carte, which those initiated in the tarot call the lame (its more esoteric term). This is rendered possible to understand by knowledge of the artisanal paper used to fabricate playing cards. The three types of paper used in making playing cards forms the cardboard that is a playing card.
The types of paper used are from front to back:
I Papier cartier
II Papier à la main/ Main-brune / Étresse
III Papier au pot
Diderot explains about the middle layer, known as papier à la main or main-brune or étresse:
MAINE-BRUNE ; a kind of paper made with grey pulp, that we use for making the soul (l'âme) of playing cards. The pulp must be well ground and free of chunks, so that they do not interfere with the even smoothing of the cards. In addition, the main-brune must be well glued in order to give a certain firmness to the cards; this is easy, because these kinds of pulp easily absorb the glue
It is exactly l’âme that concerns us here because one hears lame. So, to say, l’âme of the lame is l’âme.
Through personal trial and error of making cards by hand,
it is this very layer that makes the imagery on the front of the card from being seen by the naked eye when held up to the light. It gives the very arcane sense to the major and reconciles the lame with itself. The card therefore has both a physical and spiritual anatomy, and it is the spiritual that upholds it and gives it its firmness. The papier au pot makes the uniform back of the card that brings the atouts together into one deck, and the papier cartier contains the personality of each card that is its image.
Of course, when we speak of the spiritual, we speak of internal life, and the life of a playing card is external. We then move to the playing card itself as a symbol of which its image is a part and not the whole, and its fabrication as a symbolic process of creation. The art of making playing cards can be likened to any art that it is creating an imitation of nature. Having given the card a soul, a body, and a personality; we have then made it into an anthropomorphic being. This imitation of the card as an anthropomorphic being is to be seen as the Miroir de l’Art, and is how we come to find that the indication of nature alone can instruct us.
C’est le caractère artisanal de la fabrication de la carte qui la rend naturelle, ou de la nature. Si l’on prend tout cela dans un sens d’ analogie cérébrale, il faut aussi se rappeler que l’être cérébral est analogique ou organique, et que le préfixe ana- signifie ?contre? tandis que la logique s’explique d’elle-même. Dans le Traité d’alpinisme analogique de René Daumal, il définit ainsi les principaux termes de son traité : “L’alpinisme est l’art de parcourir les montagnes en affrontant les plus grands dangers avec la plus grande prudence. On appelle ici art l’accomplissement d’un savoir dans une action”. C’est ce qui guide l’artisan dans la fabrication de ses cartes à la main . Nous rappelons également le terme d’ étresse , c’est-à-dire de détresse . C’est la souffrance dans une action qui guide le cartier vers la connaissance par l’action elle-même. On retrouve cela dans la longueur du processus de fabrication artisanale des cartes. Étant donné que la première action d’un cartier est d’amasser les papiers (dont on compte l’ étresse ) à coller sous la presse, ce point est pertinent pour signifier les difficultés qu’un cartier rencontrera dans son processus.
Now if one were to take a look at the dimensions of a card in space, it is a three-dimensional structure like that unto the French cathedrals themselves. A real work of art, easily dismissed in its construction. It has length, height, and depth, while its imagery holds a two-dimensional presence to the viewer, that of length and height. If one then moves to the imagery and its personality, having taken all I’ve said into account, one can separate the gross from the subtle and remove the length and remain with the height. Doing this, one understands that what is dessus is dessous. If one does this successfully, it is no stretch to understand what empty space is and the occupation thereof. And that dearest reader is the fabrication of a triomphe.
by Étienne-Gaspar LeSauvage
