We have created some cards based on Henri Meunier's Jeu de Cartes Estétique Nº1 of 1900, a Piquet deck commissioned as advertising for Hau, a Reims champagne shipper.
This is Aesthetic Number 2. (red Diamonds and black Clubs):
And this is Aesthetic Number 3 (Orange Diamonds and Green Clubs)
We created them as a completion* of Henri Meunier's Aesthetic No 1 (1900)**:
Henri Meunier (1873-1922) was a Belgian artist of the Belle Epoque, highly influenced by the Japonisme movement. His graphic design was a prominent feature of public art such as posters and advertisements.
On a card included in the pack, it tells of a full set of cards, a Whist pack (52 cards) rather than a Piquet pack (32 cards), that was in the press: "SOUS PRESSE - JEU DE WHIST-COMPOSITIONS NOUVELLES PAR HENRI MEUNIER".
For whatever reasons, this did not come to pass; his representative for Belgium, George Ernotte-Michaux of Brussels, was really a wine shipper, and if there was benefit from the advertisement, perhaps there was no call for a pack nearly twice the size either. It is in tribute to this great designer and aesthete, we undertook the completion of his Whist deck, as Aesthetic Packs of Cards Nos. 2 and 3.
In his Piquet set there are no 2s, 3s, 4s, 5s or 6s. These are our designs for those cards.
We used elements of his design elements to make new the new ones. This involved hypothesising as to how the pattern that went from 7 to 10 could bridge 1 via 2 through 6.
There is no source material to be had for Meunier's design decisions, but the spades and clubs appear to be based on leaf forms, while the diamond seems to be floral. The heart is the only descending design, and seems to draw on Catholic flaming heart symbolism. To make the new symbols we had to speculate how that decorative series might continue, while making the design elements match across the ranks. This meant the 2 of Hearts has an inverted element, to match the inversions on the other three:
Since the Esthetique No 1 had two red suits, a black and a green, we decided to make the two sets out of it. We made Number 2 to conform to the standard 2-red 2-black French pattern, and for the Number 3, we used Rowley's Symbolic Pattern colours and made the Diamonds orange.
You can buy a copy of the two sets printed on demand at Make Playing cards. The Aesthetic Number 2 is available for purchase here, and the Aesthetic Number 3 here.
We've also use the Aesthetic Number 2 in some other cards that we will discuss soon. These include our Grasset Almanac Deck (available here), and our Syncretic Hanafuda #1 (available here). Aesthetic Number 3 is in out Syncretic Hanafuda #2.
* A completion is a pack/deck where missing cards have been conjured up. There are several reasons why this can be needed. It can be because the cards were a proof of concept (as is the case with the Exler Preference deck) . Then it may be because they have been lost to history (as is the case with a number of our productions). And then they might be needed because the original was made for a game that required fewer cards to play. Piquet and Preference only need 32 cards, Bura and Schafkopf 36 cards. So an artists deck made for those markets can't be used for games such as Bridge or Cribbage that need the full 52. And even regular 52 card sets will need to be augmented to play games requiring 60 cards, such as Manx, Baccari, and Congress.
** He was commissioned to make this set for a Belgian Champagne shipper:
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