Cego: Badisches bild / tiertarock. ASS (Die Echten Altenburger Spielkarten), Germany. Stripped playing-tarot deck, French suited, 54 double-headed cards. Size: 63mm x 110mm.
Deck make-up:
Trumps: 1-21.
Hearts and diamonds: 1-4, foot jack, mounted jack, queen, king.
Clubs and spades: 7-10, foot jack, mounted jack, queen, king.
Extras: joker.
Cego is a tarot card game for three or four players played mainly in Baden, the Black Forest, the adjacent Baar lowland and around Lake Constance in Switzerland and Austria. The game is similar to königrufen and tapp-tarock. The game uses a (stripped) animal tarot deck (also referred to as tiertarock) that dates to the early 19th century. The deck uses French suits (hearts, clubs, diamonds, spades) rather than the German suits (hearts, acorns, bells, leaves) that might be expected.
The deck shown is the sole remaining version of this deck to be produced. Earlier there had been various variations specific to Bavaria, Belgium and upper Austria. Similar animal-tarot decks were also made in/for Alsace, other German states, Luxembourg, Sweden, and Russia. This deck is structured the same as the industrie und glück pattern, but with different imagery.
Click on any card to explore the design.
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Card image size, below:
Trump 1 shows the kleiner mann (based on Hanswurst). Trump 2 has mythological hybrids. The uppermost animal on trump 2 would seem to be a hybrid of seal and lion (=sea lion?). Meanwhile, trumps 3 to 21 depict real animals. Often the upper image is of the male animal, and the lower of the female (trump 21, for example, has a cockerel when upright and a hen when inverted).
The deck is stripped: it loses the 5-10 of the red suits, and the 1-6 of the black suits. The 2 of hearts in this deck is rather confusing as it features the maker's logo as an extra pip rendering the card easily confused with the 3!
On first inspection, the court cards seem to look identical when inverted. This isn't the case: there are subtle colouring changes. Check out the colour of the hat in the foot (lower) jack, for example, or the dress of the queen.
The diamond courts have a rather Eastern taste to them – the king in particular.
The joker here (left) shows a gleeman and is called the stieß or g'stieß (fool). It functions as the highest trump but lacks the orange panels depicting its rank that the other trumps have on both ends of the cards.