Jass. Piatnik, Vienna. Stripped regular deck, Swiss suited, 37 cards. Size: 58mm x 89mm.
Deck make-up:
Roses, acorns, bells, shields: A, 6-10, under-jack, over-jack, king.
Extras: blank card.
Jass is a family of similar trick-taking games played extensively in Switzerland. In fact it is often considered Switzerland's national card game. The deck used is stripped and consists only of the ranks ace, 6-10, under-Jack, over-jack, and king. Though it can be played with any set of suits, it is traditionally played with a Swiss-suited deck (which is a variation of a German-suited deck) especially in the north-east of the country; elsewhere in Switzerland, a French-suited deck is used.
In modern times, only two sorts of truly traditional Swiss-suited decks are generally sold – the 36-card type for Jass, as described above, and a lesser-known 48-card variant (this time including ranks 3, 4 and 5) for a version of Jass called Kaiserspiel.
The Swiss suits are: roses, acorns, (hawk) bells and shields. Acorns and bells are taken straight from German suits but roses and shields are unique to the Swiss cards. It has been suggested (although without much evidence that I can see) that the roses may be taken from the Latin coins suit (specifically the flowers which are shown in the centre of the coins in some patterns) and that the shields may be some sort of corruption of the German hearts suit (Wikipedia tell us: "...as both the shields and hearts suits lower halves end in a point.") The 10s show banners and it seems these might derive from the banners shown on the 10s in old hunting decks such as the Ambraser Hofjagdspiel. The aces in Jass packs are shown with two pips, not one.
Click on any card to explore the design.
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Card image size, below:
In general within Swiss- (and German-) suited packs, the under-jack is told from the over-jack by the position of the pip symbol. If it's placed lower down with respect to the main picture, it's the under-jack; if placed higher up, it is the over-jack. There are no queens.
Note the jester figure on the under-jack.
Note that the shields on the ace, 10 and courts are in colour whereas those on the 6 through 9 are in black and white (I think this actually makes the suit more interesting rather than less so). The shield shape on the ace is quite a bit different from the others. The designs on the shields are not fixed and vary from pattern to pattern.
The deck here includes a spare blank card.