Old Essays 3, 1994: Orpelli and Naibi

 Franco's essay in this post gets rather involved, some might find say tedious, unless you're interested either in 14th century techniques for making cheap paintings on parchment that will hold up at least for a while under much handling, or how terminology generalizes to fit new applications. For example, we have tin foil, tin cans, tins of tunafish, etc., of varying strengths and flexibility, long after any of them contained tin. Medieval Italian did the same, and with many other words, for example "charta," later spelled "carta," as Franco's samples show.

Originally "Orpelli e naibi," this essay was written in 1994 and appeared in The Playing-Card in 1997; it is now at at https://naibi.net/A/64-ORPELLI-Z.pdf. Comments in brackets are mine, in consultation with Franco. In the Italian version, most of the long quotations are in notes at the end. However, you really have to at least glance at them in order to follow Franco's comments on them in the text. So for the translation, they are being incorporated into the text. They are also given "bullets" to separate items in lists, as the THF software does not seem to allow indents and bullets are more attractive than underlined blank spaces.

On the 1430 Florentine cardmaker Antonio di Giovanni di Ser Francesco, Franco has a new note just put on naibi.net this month. A translation will follow in due course.

ORPELLI AND NAIBI
Franco Pratesi - 09.10.1994 [October 9, 1994]
The Playing-Card 26 No. 2 (1997) 38-45.

Abstract

A piece of research has been carried out on the early spread in Italy of playing cards, with reference to the specific materials and production techniques involved. It is suggested that the first playing cards entered the market through the arts and crafts already established for the production of orpelli, leaflets of parchment covered by a thin film with the aspect of gold or silver. New documents on these items and their characteristics in the second half of the 14th century are provided from the registers of Francesco Datini, a renowned merchant from Prato. Conditions for the spread of playing cards are discussed.

Naibi

The history of playing cards begins in Asia: the origin, far away in space and time, is little defined in its details and developments; however, it seems that the evolution of the various types of playing cards was slow and that their diffusion on a global scale took several centuries. However, if we limit ourselves to Europe, historians are today practically unanimous in believing that here the diffusion of the first playing cards was instead very rapid, starting from the seventies of the fourteenth century: playing cards arrived in Europe from the Islamic world, most likely from Egypt; in about twenty years, their absence went to a wide diffusion in almost all the regions of central-western Europe.

One of the first testimonies comes from a provision of the Commune of Florence [i.e., the Florentine Republic], a provision having the force of law, which in 1377 prohibited their use. In the Latin text it is explicitly stated that someone noviter innolevit the game of naibi: that is, they had recently introduced it to Florence (in itself, the verb has no nuances of meaning indicating an importation from outside, as can be found in the term naibi [the early name for playing cards in Italy]).

Some historians in the past believed that cards originated in Italy, and so it made sense to discuss whether Florence or another large Italian city had the characteristics best suited to the initial spread of the game and its typical instruments. But if cards come from the East, as we are now convinced, then the Italian testimonies only indicate the transfer of a fashion that began elsewhere and therefore lose a good part of their meaning. When we consider the situation in greater detail, however, there are several open problems. First of all, from the Islamic world we do indeed have some incomplete decks that have a concrete possibility of being prior to 1370, but there is a lack (again for the years prior to 1370) of valid written testimonies on the practice of card games in the Middle East of the medieval period: not only do we not have specific literature, of the kind handed down to us for chess, but not even brief citations in normal literature. Therefore, it seems unlikely that the game of cards was imported as is: to achieve the enormous success it had in Europe, changes to the “hardware” or “software” or both had to be made.

But let's go back to Florence. To interest the legislators, this new game must have reached a worrying size at the beginning of 1377, at least in their eyes. If some merchant had brought a new game from outside and played it with family and friends, it certainly would not have interested the authorities. The problem of how playing cards spread in those years is not an idle one and has implications of a qualitative and quantitative nature. In other cities one might think of a court of nobles who played exclusively with highly valuable cards (that no one would have thought of prohibiting); in the Florence of the time, if a dozen people played with

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cards, it is easy to imagine that soon they became thousands. But then the problem becomes that of tracking down the traces of a new type of merchandise, precisely playing cards.

Unlike many other cities, documents from the period, both public and private, have been preserved in considerable quantities, thanks to the great consideration that the Florentines and their rulers had for documents and archives. A first problem is that it is not entirely clear what to look for: what precise type of objects and under what name. Traditionally, these are the first naibi, and one should think of fairly specific decks of cards: larger in size than what would later become common; made of parchment because it was more common and long-lasting; painted one by one by an artist; something of the kind we know from the Visconti tarots of the following century.

In this case, which is usually considered to be without alternatives, it must have been a question of expensive works of art, to be carefully preserved, to be included in the family treasures. In the archives, one should find traces of them in inventories, wills, and works commissioned to artists. In fact, there is a statement by a scholar that in notarial contracts from the beginning of the fifteenth century naibi are frequently cited as valuable objects (E. Orioli, Il libro e la stampa, II, 1908, p. 110). If one could document this statement with precise references, particularly relating to the end of the fourteenth century, one would have a very useful confirmation of the value of this type of naibi.

Unfortunately, the number of codices in the Archivio Notarile Antecosimiano [pre-Cosimo Notarial Archive] is so high that it is practically impossible to examine them exhaustively. Furthermore, the notarial writing of the time is much more difficult to decipher than those prevalent in other documents and my reading ability often proves insufficient. It is therefore not surprising that the examination of a small sample of fourteenth-century notarial codices (where one might also have found some citations of naibi in the years immediately preceding 1377) provided a disappointing result: I found few inventories of goods and none that contained naibi.

However, there are also other sources that are easier to read, such as the registers of the Magistrato dei Pupilli [Magistracy of Minors]: documents with testamentary provisions, debts and credits, inventories of real estate and even household goods. The detail of these inventories is such that naibi could not be missing, if they had been recognized as having an economic value, even if small. Even in registers of this type, examined for the years shortly after 1377, I have found no trace of naibi.

The situation could have been different, however: the diffusion of cards could have already been widespread, their unit cost low, their quality inferior; if one considers playing cards, as later, consumer goods that easily deteriorate or get lost, no one would have taken them into consideration in the inventories. But in this case, it would have been the quantity that made itself felt, because it would have been a new type of merchandise with one or more Florentine “arts” [i.e. crafts] interested in their manufacture and sale. And so, there are various documents to be examined, starting with the statutes of the potentially interested “arts,” especially that of doctors and apothecaries. Today it is not immediately clear why this “art” was that of so many famous people and artists: the fact is that many professions and trades, even of little importance, sooner or later fell within this major ”art.”

I then searched for traces of naibi in various documents, without success until the already known documentation from a few decades later, such as that of Antonio di Giovanni di Ser Francesco, the cardmaker who in 1430 reported to the Catasto [Property Tax Register] the wooden forms he used to produce figures of naibi and saints. After having frankly admitted that I had found nothing specific, I can, however, say that I am convinced of the context in which naibi must have been inserted, that of orpelli. I do not want to say that orpelli were naibi or vice versa; only that playing cards found, in Florence and elsewhere, a similar genre of commodity in whose manufacturing channels they could be inserted.

Orpelli

The word orpello [from or=gold and pelle=skin] today has full citizenship in the Italian lexicon with the meaning of "ornament of a flashy and brilliant appearance, often characterized by tackiness and bad taste; frill;

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excessive and useless embellishment” (M. Pfister, Lessico etimologico italiano, Wiesbaden, 1990); starting from this meaning, the figurative one of “rhetorical device, elegant literary embellishment, but lacking real expressive consistency” is also common. In reality, even the first meaning is translated from another one that is now little used: “copper and zinc alloy similar in color to gold, used to set precious stones; commercially available in the form of thin sheets.” In short, an alloy, a raw material, with an appearance not too different from orpiment, “arsenic trisulphide in golden yellow crystals.” In these and in some other documented meanings, even when remaining within the scope of concrete objects, the contribution of skin [pelle] has been lost and that of gold [or, in Italian] has been maintained, at least in terms of shine and typically yellow color. Instead, we are interested in still another meaning, which appears to be the original one: orpello to mean sheets of gilded skin.

In this ancient meaning, the term is often associated with another that has had less fortune (not having had as many transformations of meaning): argenpelli [argento = silver, in Italian], the same objects as before, but silvered. Sometimes the color is indicated: white or yellow, and therefore “orpello bianco” was synonymous with argenpello.

I have not found much information on the characteristics and uses of these traditional objects, which clearly are at the origin of the many subsequent meanings of the term. Was the support that provided consistency and foldability, or the coating that gave the metallic shine important? It is certain that thanks to metallization, the objects could replace much more expensive prototypes: actual sheets of gold or silver.

But with the transition from the noble metal sheet to these objects, another transformation occurs: instead of a permanent decorative object, a temporary decoration is obtained, a disposable type of ornament. We should not be surprised, therefore, that the church of San Lorenzo ordered new orpelli for the holidays every year (Cigliana, personal communication), or that we do not find these objects in the inventories of household goods.

The process must not have been simple. Some recipes are preserved among the "secrets" of the manuscript codices; according to one from a later period (BNCFI [Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze], Cl.XVI.121 [Fondo Magliabechiano Classe 16th, #121]), it would appear that starting from various doses of verdigris, ammonium salt and vitriol, it was mixed with vinegar or urine, depending on the case, and the final polishing took place in several stages, alternating them with soot deposits. In other documents the use of gesso [a type of thin plaster] as a substrate is mentioned. I really don't think that today one could obtain good results, at least trying to use the techniques of the time.

From where does this production originate? It is known that gilding and silvering were produced on parchment [i.e., stretched animal skin] and on increasingly thicker supports, up to leather. Gilded leather, also used as a substitute for tapestries, was quite widespread in Europe until the 18th century, and a famous center for their production was Venice. This production is, however, ancient and is generally traced back to the Arabs and Moorish Spain: thus, the red “cordovans” [tablecloths] which took their name directly from Cordoba, were appreciated in the Middle Ages throughout Europe.

Also for silvering there are ancient Iberian testimonies for the use of the related terms: Portuguese argempel from 1253, Spanish argentpel from 1258, Venetian Latin argentumpelle from 1271, Catalan argent pel from 1284, Lucchese argimpello from 1308 (see M. Pfister, op. cit., 1988). In the first half of the fourteenth century, there are also many testimonies of the terms corresponding to orpello.

Testimonies of this type are usually quite distant (and it is not known by how much) from the introduction of the objects; it is obvious that one cannot rely on the chronological order of what is documented today to the point of hypothesizing, for example, a Portuguese origin of the silver and leather goods that would later give rise to orpelli. However, as happened with other goods and fashions and games and sciences, it seems plausible that the manufacturing of orpelli also came from the Islamic world via Spain.

If we recognize that these manufactured objects have something in common with ancient playing cards, we must admit that more than a century before the arrival of the naibi, their relatives, of similar consistency and origin, had already arrived in Europe. From this perspective, the arrival of naibi was not, from a manufacturing point of view, a revolutionary event: the substrate was already widespread, albeit for other purposes. We should therefore not expect the appearance of a new type of merchandise but rather

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a considerable increase in the production of objects already present on the market, thanks to a new type of them and, above all, to an additional use, that in playing games and gambling.

Below are some data extracted from Statutes and original documents preserved in Prato in the Datini Archive. I think they can help us understand better what orpelli and argenpelli were, even if it is not easy today to achieve complete knowledge of these objects, nor of their exact relationship with naibi.

Statutes of the art of physicians and apothecaries

Information on orpello and the manufacturers of similar objects can be obtained from the Statutes of the relevant “Art,” that of the Doctors and Apothecaries, already studied and published by Ciasca. Thus, in the Statute of 1349, in a very long list of productions and trades admitted to the Art of the Doctors and Apothecaries, orpello is already mentioned as a material and the orpellaio as its maker.

And those who make or sell pouches of knives or swords or of any other kind, bags, pouches, trinkets, herbs, sheepskin, skins, cerbolacti [or cerbolatti, literally deerskin, but extended to the skin of small animals] and cerbolactai [cerbolattai, tanners of deerskins and small animal skins] and orpelli makers, jugs, tins, flasks; and those who make, sell, or beat tin, orpello, gold, silver, and the like; ... Then, they are found in the subgroup of merciai [haberdashers, American English: dry goods merchants]: Merciai are and are understood to be... and those who make or indeed sell white or yellow orpello, and of gold, or beaten silver, ...

But even more interesting is that an entire section of the subsequent statutory reform of 1371 is dedicated to orpellai. Evidently, legislators intended to stamp out a recent bad habit: to meet the demand, the orpellai had added to their usual work (tanning, seasoning and subsequent decoration of fresh skins) the recycling of old parchments [to save them the trouble of making new ones], which instead as a rule contained texts worthy of being preserved. The relevant passage from the Reform can be quoted in full.

1. That the orpello makers must observe. Desiring that for the subordinate craftsmen of said art good work be done, and especially for the orpello makers, and also so that the abbreviations [legal documents written in abbreviated form] of dead notaries written in parchment, and also ecclesiastical book and to the divine honor, ordered praises be preserved and guarded and not be sold and cannot be spoiled, with a provided resolution proclaimed and ordered that each and all makers and siricanti [literally, silk decorators, but here just decorators] of orpelli in the city, countryside, and district of Florence are required and must tan the leather from which they make orpelli, well and loyally, as was customary, nor can or should any of them under any questionable reason make or work such orpelli, or work and have made on written or erased membrane paper. And whoever will make against the aforementioned things shall be condemned by the consuls of said guild in 10 soldi of f.p. [fiorini piccoli, small florins] for each dozen, and for each time, to be taken from him by said consuls. And that no one of the said guild and said orpelli made contrary to the aforementioned form dare or presume to sell or keep in his shop, under the aforementioned penalty. And that said orpelli made contrary to the aforementioned form must be publicly burned by said consuls or by their mandate, so that no one in the future dare to make or sell any orpelli on the aforementioned written or erased membranes.

There are also fourteenth-century testimonies from Lucca about the arginpellieri and the need to preserve the traditional method of manufacture.

Also that each orpello maker must maintain the method of making orpelli, argimpelli, which is described and ordered in the Court of Merchants.” (S. Bongi, Prohibitions of Lucca in the fourteenth century. Bologna 1863).

Orpelli and argenpelli of Francesco Datini

Francesco di Marco Datini is probably the most famous citizen of Prato. He began his commercial activity in Avignon, in the years in which the city hosted the papal court and had attracted an entire colony of Italian merchants and artists. From a merchant of arms and armor he transformed gradually into a merciaio [haberdasher], with his shop full of all kinds of objects made of cloth, leather, paper and hardware. His fame is mostly linked to his subsequent activities as a wool entrepreneur and banker, which he undertook upon his return to his homeland. Among the many account books and registers he kept, we are interested in some relating to the Avignon period and in particular two types: the annual registers of the shop stock and household goods, the registers of orders for goods sent to suppliers in various cities.

It is of interest that among the goods that Datini imported to sell in Avignon there are also significant quantities of orpelli and argenpelli. For these objects, the provenance is mainly Florentine, and this suggests that in Florence there was a production that managed to establish itself either for its better quality or lower cost (or both factors at the same time).

Some passages in this regard can be cited, taken from the orders of Francesco Datini.

- 1365 In Florence we ask on 17th August ...
• 60 dozen large orpelli in sheepskin paper in the usual way, i.e. 20 dozen yellow and 40 white let them be firm and very shiny and dry sichonasipichono (= so that they do not stick together).
• 100 dozen yellow ones in small cuoio [hard leather] in the usual way let them be 50 dozen yellow ones and 50 white ones let them be firm and clean with good color and well dry it is said to us that in Rome there is a very great market for them [and] that many of them are produced. (AD [Archivio Datini, Prato] 164 f. 9)

- 1371 We ask in Florence on May 22nd from Nicholo di Matteo and Toro di Berto these things which we will say:
• 20 dozen large white argenpelli in paper [charta] of 24 istagni [or stagni, small metal sheets]
• 20 dozen white argenpelli in paper of 20 istagni
• 30 dozen white argenpelli in paper of 15 istagni
• 30 dozen white argenpelli in paper of 12 istagni
• 20 dozen white argenpelli in paper of 8 istagni
• 5 dozen yellow orpelli in paper of 20 istagni
• 10 dozen yellow orpelli in paper of 15 istagni
• 5 dozen yellow orpelli in paper of 12 istagni
and make sure that all the argenpelli and orpelli are well fixed and have good color (AD 164 f. 43)

- 1385 of July 6 to Lodovicho di Bono.
• 3 dozen yellow orpelli new whole goatskin paper that are large and not too big, they should be whole and of good goats that are quite white, that have good color and fine, usually costing . . .
• 2 dozen white argenpelli in paper of new whole young goat [kid] that are large and thin and of good whole young goats that are good color and light, usual cost.
• 12 dozen yellow orpelli with good color in old sheepskin paper inscribed in 18 to 20 pieces, and make sure that the paper is neither too thick nor too thin nor too old and that it has not been adjusted, usually costing d. [denari] 12 to 13 apiece.
• 12 dozen yellow orpelli with good colors in old sheepskin paper inscribed in 15 pieces in good paper usually costing from 12 to 13 apiece and make sure they are well dried of paint so that when you attach them together they do not stick to each other as we have already had damage.
• 24 dozen white argenpelli in old sheepskin paper, large and beautiful and in good paper of 20 to 24 pieces as you find them usually cost d. 12 apiece ...
• 24 dozen white argenpelli in old sheepskin paper large and beautiful with good paper of 15 to 18 pieces as you will find them usually costing…
• 6 dozen yellow orpelli in goat leather, 12 pieces long, firm and clean, and not thick and of good goat leather, usually cost 30 to 31 soldi per dozen.
• 3 dozen white argenpelli in goat leather 12 pieces long usually cost 28 or 30 soldi per dozen.
• 24 dozen yellow orpelli in goat leather of 6 pieces that are clean and firm and without pieces and with good color from the best master usually costing 13 soldi per dozen.
• 12 dozen white argenpelli in goat leather of 6 pieces that are clean and firm and without pieces and from the best master usually cost 12 soldi per dozen (AD 172 f. 34)

- 1373 September 20. In Florence to Nicholo and Lodovicho di Bono.
• 60 dozen argienpelli in sheepskin paper of 18 or 15 pieces as you find best or you can have them made from my papers you have at yours, let them be made in good papers and good silver color ...
• 40 dozen argienpelli in paper of 12 pieces that are in good paper of mine, you have at yours, and if by chance you have finished them, take as you will find not sending less than 12 pieces but if you find 20 pieces send and let it be this [i.e. and no more].
• 6 dozen yellow orpelli in paper of new rather thin sheepskin like the old ones of 15 pieces in 18 pieces as is best done at the best market you can have and the sooner you find them in new papers because we want to remember that they want these(?) and they can be made in new paper because in old paper they cannot be obtained, make that we have new.
• 6 dozen yellow orpelli of 12 pieces make sure they are clean and firm and with good thin paper of chavretto [young goat] but they don't want to be gessose [pasty, chalky] because most of them (. . . ?).
• 6 dozen yellow orpelli in chavretto [young goat] leather of 12 clean and firm pieces and with good fine color, soft goatskin and not too gessose, of the kind you are used to sending.
• 6 dozen white argenpelli in chavretto leather of 12 clean and firm pieces and with good color and soft leather and not too gessose and of the kind you are used to sending. (AD 166 f. 14)

On the other hand, there exist various annual inventories of furnishings and goods present in the shop and in the house, which also report indications in this regard. In particular, some are collected together in the AD 177 folder:

- Year 1366: Green orpelli and paper.
• 8 dozen and 4 orpelli of white and yellow goatskin of 18 Florentine pieces reckoned worth 18 soldi a dozen, 7/10 ...
• 30 dozen orpelli of yellow and white goat leather of 6 Florentine pieces reckoned worth 6 soldi for each dozen 9/
• 10 dozen orpelli of the same type of leather unless they are not so good or so beautiful, they are reckoned worth 5 soldi per dozen 2/10/
• 15 white orpelli in sheepskin paper of 24 pieces reckoned of 10 denari each -/ 12/6
• 3 dozen and 3 white orpelli of said manner of 20 pieces reckoned at 7 soldi a dozen 1/2/9
• 14 dozen white and yellow orpelli of 15 pieces reckoned value 6 s. dz 4/4/
• 22 dozen yellow and white orpelli in said manner of 12 good pieces reckoned are worth 6 dozen 6/12
• 9 dozen and 3 skins of young Milanese goat for sewing horse harnesses reckoned worth 22 s. dozen 10/3/6
• 3 dozen white and yellow sheepskin paper orpelli of 18 and 12 pieces of several kinds and aged reckoned worth 6 soldi a dozen 1/1
• 5 dozen white and yellow orpelli in said manner of 12 and 8 pieces of several kinds and aged reckoned reckoned worth 4 soldi a dozen 1/2 (AD 177, quad. [= quaderno, notebook] no. 1, f. 13)

- Year 1367. There is a full page with 18 entries of orpelli and argenpelli of various types; the last entry is:

• 130 sheets of orpelli and argenpelli in paper and leather of various kinds, bad and worn-out and made by hand, reckoned at 1 florin (AD 177, quad. no. 3, f. 9)

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- Year 1369 (among other things):
• 7 dozen argenpelli in isolated [isparigliati] parchment of several masters all reckoned 30 soldi
• 13 dozen green parchments of Milan (AD 177, quad. no. 6, f. 12).

In addition to the numerous orpelli and argenpelli, there are other types of skins and leathers [cuoi = stiff, hard leathers], of various animals and from different origins. Among the workshop tools listed in the notebooks of the usual AD 177 there are also some tools that were used to “print” decorations on leather. For example, the following are recorded:

• 1 lead [plate] to be stamped and 1 mallet with three stamps (quad. no. 2, 1367, f. 20);
• 2 mallets with eight stamps (quad. no. 4, 1368, f. 27);
• 1 mallet with 6 stamps for printing not good (quad. no. 7, 1372, f. 24a);
• 1 lead [plate] to print leather goods; 4 stamps with hammers to print leather goods (quad. no. 11, 1387, f. 23).

Plausibly, rather thick skins were “printed,” and it is not certain that these tools could also be used with orpelli, but the principle was not substantially different.

Returning to orpelli and argenpelli, useful information is obtained, even if often not exactly uniquely defined:

1) location: Florence appears as one of the locations with the greatest production and best quality; only exceptionally are orpelli ordered from Pisa; we are informed that in Rome there was a great trade in orpelli; Messina also appears, albeit rarely, as a location of typical manufacturing; instead, the “green parchments” come from Milan, probably a typical local production.

2) processing: the pieces must be made and seasoned well so as not to stick to each other; the color must be uniform; some old orpelli are said to be hand-made, so that it can be thought that usually they had some decoration applied by a mechanical process; there is also talk of isolated [sparigliati] orpelli, that is, not belonging to a series; the hand of different masters is recognizable.

3) assembling: the number of [small] pieces or stagni [metal sheets, from the word for tin but more general] is not [a] fixed [process], indicating a variety of sizes of the constituent elements or of the resulting [big] sheet. Rarely does the number of pieces require a division of the [big] sheet [foglio] into more than two or three vertical columns; the most common correspond to 12, 15 and 18 pieces, suggesting a 3x4, 3x5 and 3x6 configuration, respectively [of small sheets joined into one big sheet].

Discussion and conclusions

It does not seem far-fetched to suppose that the production of naibi took advantage of the pre-existing processing of orpelli. Perhaps at the beginning, naibi were simply by-products. There are, however, some obscure points concerning the production of orpelli and naibi.

It is not clear whether orpelli were made on paper. Sometimes they are mentioned exactly like that, but it can be suspected that the term carta [paper] was used in these cases in place of pecora [sheepskin] or parchment paper; in fact, the term carta di bambagia [cotton paper] or its synonyms, used by Datini for actual paper, was not explicitly mentioned.

It is also not clear why the pieces could be called stagni [normally, pieces of tin], by the adding of which the orpello of the current dimensions was obtained. It seems that stagno could commonly indicate any metallic sheet [like “tinfoil” in English]. It is easy for us to confuse two probably very different things: on the one hand we have the orpello, a metallic sheet obtained by putting together several pieces of parchment or leather, plausibly of standard dimensions; on the other hand, we have the sheet of standard dimensions inside which the pieces corresponding to the playing cards are obtained: here, too, we have a configuration of equal rectangles of the type 3x3, 4x4, 4x8 or similar (H. Rosenfeld, The Playing-Card XXI, 1992, p. 2). The dimensions in the two cases would seem very different, and the idea that the naibi could in some way correspond to the stagni that made up the orpelli, is not convincing.

The substrate is the same, however. We know it from ancient playing cards, made of parchment covered with a layer of gesso and a uniform gilding that in turn acts as a background to the image: this typical workmanship of ancient playing cards did not arrive with the naibi but with the orpelli, yellow or white, more than a century earlier.

As time went by, the production of naibi was to join and surpass that of orpelli themselves. For playing cards to end up achieving the great success that is known to us, several further production developments had to take place, starting from the common basis we have seen. It is not easy to reconstruct exactly whether they occurred in parallel or in sequence, nor where, nor when;


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However, it seems certain that there must have been several stages. Starting from the orpelli, the following can be identified as the main stages.

1) Introduction of figures on sheets of uniform metallic gloss. Images on parchment, with flowers or other subjects, seem to have circulated also in ancient Rome; however, they were not playing cards. It is not clear whether orpelli were already usually decorated with figures painted on top of the uniformly metallic surface. Probably a finish of this kind also spread to the most common decorative use, such as the temporary decoration of churches.

2) The transition from drawing to printing. It is clear that this is a very useful transition for mass production. When we talk about printing, our thoughts inevitably go to Mainz with Fust, Schäffer and Gutenberg working on the Bible. But primitive examples of figures obtained with some mechanical system were much earlier. If the decoration of the surface with the use of molds becomes widespread, there is inevitably a greater tendency for the images to become uniform, with few variations compared to a few more appreciated models, which we can assume to be predominantly of an abstract geometric type or a religious subject.

3) Transition to figures in hierarchical order. This is the transition from traditional figures in arbitrary succession to figures with a universally recognizable hierarchy, with the consequence (intentional or not) of being able to lend themselves more easily to their application in various types of games. In this respect, the naibi (whose originality is therefore understood in this context as essentially linked to their iconography) must have immediately revealed themselves to be decisive for the success of the idea. It should be noted that the main novelty consisted in the numerical character of most of these objects, such that they could be related to the many dice games already in use, permitted or, more frequently, prohibited, as they might be.

4) Transition from parchment to paper. When we have the first information about naibi, paper was already produced in various Italian locations, but it was not yet cheap enough, nor were the metallization techniques already used on leather probably directly transferable. However, the most likely centers for a large production of playing cards must be considered cities where paper was either produced directly or was easily available. In Florence, paper usually came from nearby Colle Val d'Elsa, at an early date and in considerable quantities; but the prized paper from the Marches could also be obtained quite easily.

Certainly, technological progress (and especially the availability of paper in greater quantities and at lower prices on the one hand and the spread of printing techniques such as xylography [woodcuts] on the other) gave a great impulse to the multiplication of playing cards and their uses. But what was missing around 1375 for a wide diffusion of playing cards was not paper and probably not even a primitive printing system. The most important thing that happened at the time was the adoption of a standard series of values, easily recognizable, such as was present in naibi.