my playing card collection
French Suits
By the 1480s the French had turned to producing Hearts, Clubs, Spades and Diamonds.
From 1701 France was manufacturing different patterned cards from nine regions, Paris, Bourgogne, Lyonnais, Auvergne, Daulphiné, Provence, Languedoc, Guyenne and Limousine.
By the 1780s, many of the regional patterns were fading away, and the Paris pattern rose to pre-eminence as the general pattern throughout France.
The primary deck of 52 playing cards in use today includes 13 ranks of each of the four French suits, clubs (♣), diamonds (♦), hearts (♥) and spades (♠), with reversible Rouennais "court" or face cards. Each suit includes an ace, depicting a single symbol of its suit (quite large often only on the ace of spades) a king, queen, and jack, each depicted with a symbol of their suit; and ranks two through ten, with each card depicting that number of symbols (pips) of its suit. As well as these 52 cards, commercial decks often include between one and four jokers, most often two. These Jokers are not used in most basic game rules, but have a variety of uses with rule variations, and can simply serve as "spares" to replace a damaged or lost card.
French playing cards by B.P. Grimaud, Paris.
See B. P. Grimaud Superfine deck.
Rouen Pattern