The Flemish Hunting Deck, also known as the Cloisters set of fifty-two playing cards and Hofjaren Jachtpakket[dubious – discuss] (in Dutch), is a set of fifty-two playing cards owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, United States.
[3] The cards are hand-drawn and painted on pasteboard, with highlights of gold and silver, in the contemporary technique for illuminated manuscripts.
[6] In the auction catalogue it was mentioned as an incomplete set of tarot cards dating from the sixteenth century.
[2] Kenter kept the set for some years, even cycling with it in his coat pocket through Amsterdam, which his insurance company later prohibited him from doing.
[2] The Metropolitan Museum of Art bought the set of cards and it is now part of The Cloisters collection.
[1] The suits are based on hunting items, consisting of game nooses, hound tethers, horns, and dog collars.
[1] This particular deck, due to its bright colors painted on a background of ivory, differs from most cards of its time.
[1] One of the identified watermarks on the card appears with a Gothic style "p", capped with an ornament, cropped on the edge of the sheets.
[3] The fork-tailed "p" can be found in cards such as the 2 of Nooses and the 2 of Dog Collars surrounded by a four-leaf clover shape.
[3] The figures appear with rounded faces, small lips, and circle shapes with dots in the center as eyes, and overall, the facial expressions are very limited.
[3] The fashion of the kings and queens is not representative of a singular time or event, but rather, a mix of the different decades of the 15th century.
[3] The cards are perhaps making a statement about the over-the-top fashion of the Burgundian court with the exaggerated clothing, hence the mix-matched yellow and black shoes of the King of Nooses.
[5] In 1995, Piatnik in conjunction with the Metropolitan Museum of Art produced a facsimile of the Flemish hunting pack as a boxed set with a booklet where they were known as the Flämisches Jagdkartenspiel.