Urn with Playing Cards

Size: 30" X 37
Medium: Pigment Print
Date: 2015
Edition Size: 75

This Statement Print is designed to be placed in a game room, but is suitable for many other settings.

Playing cards were invented during the Tang dynasty in China. These cards entered into Europe from Egypt in the 1300s from Moorish Spain and trade between Italy and Egypt.European playing cards carry a rich heritage from the Spanish,Italian,German and English but it owes much to the French for their ingenuity in style and design that made its fashionable mark into gaming houses and royal courts. It was mid-15th-century France where invention of the use of suits and court cards that most countries use today.

These are the Hearts, Diamonds, Clubs and Spades. On the upper left hand is the the King of Clovers (derived from Trefles or Clubs) sovereign to the husbandman. On the lower right hand is Queen of Spades, sovereign to Piques, the points of lances, symbolizing the knights themselves. See the poker face below each handle on the urn. It is no other than the joker observing both sides for It's not the time or place to enter this game. Perhaps it is in this idleness as spectator where the joker imagines how to prevail over all others and what its right and left bower may be.

The joker assumes a hand is dealt and that spades are named as trump.The joker's’ first choice, to its right bower is to be Jack of Spades and its second rank choice on its left bower is to be Jack of Clubs. Such scheming will thrive in the new world where the joker invents its role on the most modern card,honoring nothing other than winning with tricks-taking games to trump all others in the gambling houses of New Orleans to even practiced among the Pennsylvanian Amish.