A flurry of excitement rippled through the tarot world in early 2023 when a previously unknown Tarot de Marseille, dated 1639, was auctioned in Paris. This very special deck is the earliest documented TdM we know of, and is in nearly pristine condition.
When it sold for a very large sum, I lamented that it would probably disappear into the vault of a private collector, not to be seen again in my lifetime. Happily, I was very wrong. It was purchased by card maker Yves Reynaud of Marseille, who has given the world many facsimiles of rare TdMs. Recently, he published a lightly touched up version of the Vachier deck, which is now available to purchase.
Card makers sometimes acquired woodblocks from printers who had died or left the business, scraping the old name and date off the blocks before reusing them. Vachier’s woodblocks were reused by the Payen workshop in Avignon after one hundred years had elapsed. As far as I know, it’s unheard of to find two tarot decks, separated by a century, printed from the same blocks. Marco Benedetti has created a facsimile of Payen’s deck, so we can compare the two printings.
Let’s take a close look at the original Vachier deck, Reynaud’s version, and the Payen 1743 printed by Benedetti. On the left is a poor quality photo from the auction house catalog. Center is Reynaud’s printing, and on the right is the Payen facsimile printed by Benedetti.
Vachier’s colors are quite rich. Especially notable is the violet, which fell out of favor after the end of the 17th century due to the ink’s cost. Seventeen of the twenty-two trumps contain violet, and it’s used to accent all the court cards. No violet appears after trump fifteen. Was Vachier running out of violet ink? Perhaps he decided he had used too much of the expensive ink and was being conservative. Reynaud’s reprinting of the deck brightens the colors, and the red is shifted slightly toward orange. Payen’s later printing substitutes dark blue for the violet.
The Jean Payen Connection
Jean Payen senior was documented as a master card maker in Marseille by 1679. He undoubtedly knew the Vachier family, since printers lived and worked in the same neighborhood, and they belonged to the same guild. In 1686, the Payen family moved to Avignon, where their workshop became the most important in that city.
Sometime between 1700 and1703, Guillaume Vachier, son or grandson of Philippe, stayed in Avignon for a while. He could have sold his father’s woodblocks to Payen at this time. Jean Payen junior took over the shop in Avignon after his father’s death in 1741. He recycled the Vachier woodblocks in 1743.
Reynaud’s Vachier deck on the left and Benedetti’s Payen deck on the right illustrate how printers scraped the previous owner’s name and date off a woodblock before reusing it. Payen and Reynaud filled in the white spaces in the leaves at the ends of the ribbon with gray ink. Compare this to the photo of the original card below.
The woodblocks were in remarkably good condition after one hundred years, and evidently hadn’t been used much before Payen acquired them. The lower coin is surrounded by three circles. The outer circle on the Payen card has a break at lower right, and the tip of the leaf on the middle right edge is broken off. The damage is minimal.
The Two of Cups allows us to further compare Reynaud’s printing of the Vachier on the left and Benedetti’s Payen on the right. (The original Payen deck is housed in the Fournier museum.)
Under the ink, we can see that the lines are identical, and are in remarkably good shape in Payen’s deck. The dolphin’s tail on the left shows some wear and little breaks, and small signs of wear appear in a few other places. The Vachier card has been touched up a bit, but it’s obvious Payen was not quite as careful in applying ink. The stenciled colors in both cards are accurately placed, which didn’t always happen, since print shops had to churn out a high volume of decks in assembly line fashion.
Is This Really a 1639 Deck?
On the left is a photo of the original card taken by Isabelle Nadolny at the Paris auction house. Reynaud’s touched-up card is on the right.
Philippe Vachier is documented as a master card maker in Marseille from 1632-1670, so he could have made this deck in 1639. But the original date on the card is hard to read and ambiguous.
What is presumed to be the number 1 in 1639 is detached from the other digits and looks more like the capital “I” that appears in the name at the bottom of the ribbon. As for the other three digits, Reynaud straightened the middle number so it looks more like a 3, then he flipped the two end numbers horizontally and switched their places so they read more like 639.
Vachier’s carving is so meticulous, it seems odd his date would be such a mess. Woodblocks are carved in mirror image. Did an inexperienced apprentice botch the job? Or did Vachier scrape off an earlier date, meaning the woodblock was created by an older generation of the Vachier family. Instead of a date, perhaps originally there was a word with the letter “I” in it. The word was scraped off in 1639, and the “I” recycled as a number.
Tarot experts have accepted that Vachier printed his deck in 1639, but those ambiguous numbers add to the mystery.
Links
Reynaud’s website for purchasing a Vachier deck: https://www.tarot-de-marseille-heritage.com/
To obtain a Payen 1743, email Marco Benedetti at: Benedetti.tarot@gmail.com
Florent Giraud also prints a Payen 1743 deck: www.tarotgraphe.com
My article surveying TdM type I decks including Vachier and Payen:
https://tarot-heritage.com/2023/10/28/celebrating-the-tarot-de-marseille-type-i/#more-4286
Thanks to Iolon at Tarotwheel.net who researched the genealogy of Vachier and Payen and posted it online in early 2023.
Thanks to Marco Benedetti who sent me Nadolny’s photo of the original card.