Virginia Russell's Playing Card Collection

Tarock: Piatnik 1972

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F. Piatnik & Sohne

Austria

Unknown

1972 c

54 + 1 blank + 1 name card

Tarock

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Cards from an "Industrie und Glück" or "Rural Scenes" tarock deck manufactured by Ferd Piatnik & Söhne. The original stencil coloured design was published in 1910. This is a later version of the same design and was published by Ferdinand Piatnik & Sohne, Vienna for Benno Products , London around 1972.

Refer to The World of Playing Cards for more information on the history of Austrian Tarock cards.

The Skuss

The Pagat

Tarock is an Austrian version of the Tarot group of card games played with a tarot deck and which originated in Italy about 600 years ago.

The basic rules first appeared in the manuscript of Martiano da Tortona, written before 1425. The games, known as "tarot", "tarock", "tarocchi" and other spellings, are known in many variations, mostly cultural and regional. A complete Tarot deck such as one for French Tarot contains the full 78-card complement and can be used to play any game in the family. Austrian-Hungarian Tarock and Italian Tarocco decks, however, are a smaller subset (of 56, 54, 40, or even 36 cards) suitable only for games of a particular region.

This Tarock deck consists of 54 cards, divided into two groups: 32 suit cards and 22 Tarocks (trumps).

The 32 suit cards consist of four courts: king, queen, knight and jack, along with four lower ranked cards, the pips of eight cards each in the four suits: hearts, diamonds, spades and clubs -.

The cards rank as follows:

In black suits: king, queen, knight and jack 10, 9, 8 and 7

In red suits: king, queen, knight and jack, Ace, 2, 3 and 4.

The Tarocks can trump any suit card, but suit must be followed. For rules of the game see HERE.

The 22 Tarocks are numbered I to XXI and the Skus.They are ranked according to the Roman numbers displayed on the corner of these cards.

Six Tarocks are specially named as they play important roles in the game:

I - Pagat
II - Uhu
III - Kakadu
IIII - Marabu
XXI - Mond (The Moon). It is derived from the French Monde (The World).

The 22nd Tarock is unnumbered and depicts a harlequin. It is often called the Sküs, Gstieß, or a number of other phonetic derivations of the French "Excuse"

The Sküs, Mond and Pagat are called the Trull (derived from the French "tous les trois" or "all the three"). Tarocks II, III, and IIII are called Vogel ("Birds").