Beginning in 1701, the French monarchy insisted that the graphic design of kings, queens, and jacks in playing card decks conform to a standard pattern. Examples sporting unauthorized face card designs betrayed the fact that their manufacturers had not paid a stamp tax to the crown. In order to escape the tax, card-makers throughout the century set up clandestine workshops to manufacture playing cards they could bring to market at a lower price. These “hidden” urban workshops were often established on the upper floors of residential buildings, or in abandoned cellars. In one instance, the authorities ironically discovered a card-making operation in the basement of the Tuileries Palace, the King’s residence in Paris; in another, they uncovered a workshop in the royal mint in Bordeaux.
This paper will detail the cat-and-mouse game played by card-makers and royal tax officials up to the Revolution of 1789. In the subsequent revolutionary period through 1797, the state ended the excise tax on this consumer item, which led card-makers to abandon concealed workshops. During the Revolution, the flash point for manufacturers, card players, and the revolutionary state became politics, not economics; the state now examined face card design for ideological conformity (no kings, queens, or jacks in the new republic), rather than an increase in state revenue. The story of playing card manufacture in eighteenth-century France, then, suggests that neither the practices of concealment nor the politics of transparency resolved the surprisingly complicated issues raised by the manufacture and marketing of this everyday consumer item.