Hello Tom and all,
First of all, thank you for the advance credit of faith in my abilities.
Tarot packs differ from „normal“ decks in that they have an additional court card, the Cavalier, a man on horseback, between Queen and Jack, plus 22 trumps: the Fool, mostly without a number, and 21 numbered ones, from 1 to 21. Makes 78 cards. Well, at the beginning, all tarot packs were Italian-suited, i.e. with Swords, Batons, Cups and Coins (these suits are still in use today, for example in Italy, and in the Spanish variant, in many parts of the world.) The trumps used to show typical figures and allegories, the Empress, the Lover, the Hermit, the World, the Last Judgment…
Another kind of tarot packs came up around the middle of the 18th century, this time with French suits (Hearts, Spades…) and completely different representations on the trumps: animals. Why? For mercantile reasons probably, or because people wanted more earthbound images, and no more admonition to Justice and Temperance when they were playing at cards.
From the Upper Rhine region the type spread over Middle and Northern Europe. It is no longer in use today, on the contrary to other types of tarot packs like the Austrian „Industrie und Glück“ (Industry and Fortune, named after the inscription on Trump 2), or the „Tarot Nouveau“ with representations of modern life in the city and on the countryside, still played in France and in the bordering part of Germany. Apart from those „standard“ packs, tarots were also deflected to show many other topics such as flowers, politics, history, geography, art… There is a lot to collect here.
The cards shown by Tom must be placed at the end of the evolution of animal tarots. They were printed in color lithography probably around 1910 as Geuens-Willaert took over from his parents in 1901 and seemingly ceased business activities in playing cards in the twenties. The pack would have been complete with 78 cards (the versions with 54 – and even less – cards belong to „Industrie und Glück“, and so to Austria-Hungary.)
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