Animal Tarot

The Sküs plays a musical instrument while the Pagat is represented by Hans Wurst, a carnival stock character who carries his sausage, drink, slap stick, or hat.

The rapid expansion of the game into the Holy Roman Empire and Scandinavia after the appearance of animal tarots may not be a coincidence.

The earliest animal tarots, utilizing Lyonnais face cards, were made around 1740 in Strasbourg with production also in Germany, Belgium, and Sweden up to the early 19th century.

[1][2][3][4] The animal trumps of this early pattern were copied by later makers but the motifs were often in different orders on the tarot cards.

[5] The pattern was widely copied; examples being known from Alsace, Belgium, Luxembourg, Sweden, Denmark and Russia as well as other German states.

The Belgian Animal Tarot has the same trumps as the Bavarian one above but with unique court cards such as the queens and shin-exposed kings draped in cloaks.

[10] This new design became very successful, as we know of similar tarot packs made by Galler, Biot, Demoulin, all cardmakers in Brussels.

The Upper Austrian Tarot, Tyrolean, Baltic, and Adler Cego decks all share similar court designs, being double-figured (or double-ended) versions of the Bavarian Paris pattern.

[16] At some time during the 19th century, possibly in the 1840s,[17] a second style of courts was incorporated from another early design; this is called Pattern F200 or XP8 by the International Playing-Card Society.

Süsz who joined forces with Kuntze to produce a second animal tarot pack based on the Bavarian pattern.

This Danish Animal Tarot was crude to begin with, but the design quality improved considerably within the space of just a few years.

The earliest Upper Austrian Animal Tarot pack is dated to 1813 but little is known about the origins of the pattern other than the fact that it is clearly based on its Bavarian cousin, albeit the courts are "more austere in appearance".