The 1962–1975 Tiffany Playing Cards: A Sealed Set in a Blue Box

A deck of playing cards is among the most ordinary objects in a household. Made for Tiffany & Co., boxed in the house's blue and kept sealed for half a century, it becomes something else: a small record of how a jeweller turned everyday things into gifts. This double deck, made in Spain and catalogued by The Archivary to about 1962–1975, has never been opened.

A New York house

Tiffany & Co. was founded in New York in 1837 by Charles Lewis Tiffany and John B. Young as a shop for stationery and fancy goods. It became one of the best-known jewellers and silversmiths in the world, but it continued to offer smaller objects alongside its jewellery. Playing cards belong to that range of gifts, which carried the Tiffany name into the home.

Tiffany Blue

The colour of the box is as much a part of the object as its contents. According to the house's own history, the robin's-egg blue was chosen by Charles Lewis Tiffany and first used on the cover of the Blue Book, the catalogue of the house's jewels, in 1845. It came to be used for Tiffany's boxes and bags, and the colour was registered as a trademark in 1998. Today it is identified by a custom Pantone shade, known as 1837 Blue after the year of the founding.

The box has since become a design classic in its own right, and a pack of cards presented in it was offered as a Tiffany object, not simply as a deck of cards.

The cards

The Archivary describes the set as a double deck in the original Tiffany Blue presentation box with gold trim, completely sealed. The cards were produced in Spain for Tiffany, and the Ace of Spades is marked "Tiffany & Co. — New York — Made in Spain". The backs carry a classic card-suit border, a geometric frame of hearts, spades, clubs and diamonds.

The listing dates the set to about 1962–1975. We have not identified the Spanish printer, and the dating rests on the design of the cards and of the box. It should be read as a catalogue attribution rather than a documented date.

Ephemera and its survival

Objects such as playing cards were made to be used, worn out and replaced. That is why sealed examples are uncommon: most sets were opened, played with and eventually discarded. A set that survives in its wrapping preserves the printing, the gilding and the box as they left the shop, and it allows the details of an object usually lost to use to be examined.

Paper and card are vulnerable to light, humidity and changes in temperature. Blue boxes fade and their surfaces scuff; card warps when it is kept damp. Stored dry and away from sunlight, a set of this kind can remain close to its original condition.