Andy's Playing Cards - Uncut Sheets of Playing Cards

All the pages in this gallery but one show in detail old uncut sheets of playing cards printed in Naples (Italy) by an obsolete manufacturer, Pignalosa. The last gallery, instead, features a sheet by Viassone (Turin) The Neapolitan company was founded around 1870 by Luigi Pignalosa. Then, during the first 25-30 years of the 20th century, it was run by his son Raffaele. In the 1940s Raffaele's son, Edoardo, became the new manager; his death, in 1979, marked the end of the Pignalosa firm.

All the pages in this gallery but one show in detail old uncut sheets of playing cards printed in Naples (Italy) by an obsolete manufacturer, Pignalosa. The last gallery, instead, features a sheet by Viassone (Turin)
The Neapolitan company was founded around 1870 by Luigi Pignalosa. Then, during the first 25-30 years of the 20th century, it was run by his son Raffaele. In the 1940s Raffaele's son, Edoardo, became the new manager; his death, in 1979, marked the end of the Pignalosa firm.

	The company's golden age was the first half of the 20th century, when the manufacturer produced many of the different Italian regional patterns, a few of which were advertisement editions or had non-standard suits and illustrations (a very unusual feature for Italian patterns). This variety proves how Pignalosa was an outstanding company, not only limited to Naples and its surroundings.

Around the mid 1950s, thanks to modern techniques such as automatic cutting and plastic coating, manufacturers from the north of the country such as Modiano and Dal Negro rapidly got hold of the national playing card market, and Pignalosa (still producing uncoated decks, sometimes not even regularly cut) was no longer able to stand the challenge.

What remains today of this production is a rather limited number of decks and, curiously, a much larger quantity of uncut sheets, most of which by Edoardo, approximately dating back from the early 1930s to the late 1940s. In some cases it is easy to tell precisely how old these editions are, either from the tax stamp (in actual decks) or from the date which some sheets feature on their backs. But for many undated specimens, the age of the sheet can only be estimated approximately.

What remains today of this production is a rather limited number of decks and, curiously, a much larger quantity of uncut sheets, most of which by Edoardo, approximately dating back from the early 1930s to the late 1940s. In some cases it is easy to tell precisely how old these editions are, either from the tax stamp (in actual decks) or from the date which some sheets feature on their backs. But for many undated specimens, the age of the sheet can only be estimated approximately.