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Call it a card player ’s dream . A complete set of 52 silver acting cards gild in Au and date back 400 geezerhood has been give away .
create in Germany around 1616 , the cards were engraved by a man advert Michael Frömmer , who create at least one other stage set of silver add-in .
Among a set of playing cards from 400 years ago was this king of swords, with the ruler dressed as a Holy Roman Emperor. [See more photos of the cards]
According to a taradiddle , backed up by a 19th - 100 boldness plate , the cards were at one point own by a Portuguese princess who fled the country , cards in hand , after Napoleon ’s armies invaded in 1807 .
At the time they were created in 1616 no exchangeable cards exist ; different parts of Europe had their own board styles . This particular set utilise a suit seen in Italy , with sword , coins , truncheon and cup in values from ace to 10 . Each of these suits has three face cards — big businessman , knight ( also known as cavalier ) and knave . There are no turkey . [ See exposure of the Silver Playing Cards ]
In 2010 , theplaying cardswere first put on auction bridge by an anon. family at Christie ’s auction house in New York . Purchased by entrepreneur Selim Zilkha , the carte were recently depict by Timothy Schroder , a historian with expertness in amber and silver-tongued decorative arts , in his book " Renaissance and Baroque Silver , Mounted Porcelain and Ruby Glass from the Zilkha Collection"(Paul Holberton Publishing , 2012 ) .
The king of cups. This ruler is dressed in ancient Roman clothing.
" silverish cards were especial , " Schroder writes . " They were not made for playing with but as workings of prowess for the gatherer ’s console , orKunstkammer . " Today , few outlast . " [ O]nly five sets of silver cards are known today and of these only one — the Zilkha set — is thoroughgoing . "
On the board , two of the King are depict wearing ancient Romanist article of clothing while one is show as aHoly Roman Emperorand another is dressed up as a Sultan , with clothing seen in the Middle East . . The knights and rogue are limn in unlike pose wearing ( then - contemporaneous ) Renaissance military or courtly costumes . Each board is about 3.4 inches by 2 column inch ( 8.6 centimeters by 5 centimeters ) in size of it and blank on the back .
begild with mercury
According to a family tradition Princess Carlota Joaquina possessed the silver playing cards in the early 19th century.
Creating the carte set would have been a risky line . For the gilding , its designers usedmercury , a poisonous substance that can potentially kill .
" You ground up gold into kind of a dust , and you mix it with quicksilver , and you paint that onto the surface where you wished the gilding to appear , " Schroder told LiveScience in an interview . The hydrargyrum gets burned off in a kiln , a unconscious process " that would pull up stakes the gold chemically bonded to the silver . "
The process is illegal today , he take down , and even in Renaissance time , it was screw to be hazardous . " I do n’t retrieve they quite understood why it was grave , but they did appreciate the dangers of it , " Schroder suppose .
A gift from a princess ?
The possessor of the seventeenth - century card set is not known . However , according to a tradition detail by the anon. family who sold it , in the other 19thcentury , the wit were in the willpower of Infanta Carlota Joaquina , a daughter of a Spanish Martin Luther King Jr. , who was matrimonial to a prince in Portugal . She fled to Brazil whenNapoleon ’s armiesmarched into Iberia in 1807 , obviously take the silver cards with her .
After Napoleon forced her brother , Ferdinand VII , to abdicate the throne of Spain , she made several endeavour to take over the Spanish peak and control the rural area ’s holdings in the New World . According to the syndicate tradition , she gave the posting arrange to the wife of Felipe Contucci , a man who helped in her effort .
While this report can not be proven , Schroder order he has " very fiddling grounds to doubt it . " He contribute that " when the menu were acquired by Mr. Zilkha , they came in an other 19th - 100 leather corner which had a brass plate in them , which also appeared to date from the early or middle of the 19th century , with this provenance engraved on it . "
Contucci ’s plot of land
Spain still hold in a vast empire in the New World at the time of Napoleon ’s encroachment . Among its territory was the viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata , a declamatory swath of solid ground centre in Buenos Aires ( in forward-looking - day Argentina ) .
In November 1808 , Contucci was in tangency with leadership in Buenos Aires , according to a conference paper present last February by Anthony McFarlane , a professor at the University of Warwick . Contucci told the princess they had made her an offer that would see her gain mastery of a fresh realm in South America . [ Top 12 Warrior Moms in History ]
McFarlane writes that " Contucci leaven her Hope by informing in mid - November 1808 that 124 leading man were quick to support a military intervention by a military force led by the Infante Pedro Carlos [ a relative of the princess ] and supported by Admiral Smith [ of Britain ] , to install her ( as ) theconstitutional monarchof an sovereign land . "
However , this plan was thwart when government functionary from Portugal , Spain and Britain all objected to it .
Then , in August 1809 , the Spanish embassador get in in Rio with instructions from the Junta Central ( the Spanish government not controlled by Napoleon ) , " to prevent Carlota from embark Spanish soil and to deflect her ambition to become Regent , " writes McFarlane .
Carlota ’s pipe dream of becominga ruling queenwas just not in the cards .
