Does this mean, that Pierre Francois Basan had been the artist of the Etteilla cards?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Fr ... 7ois_Basan

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre-Fr ... 7ois_Basan
"Il perd sa femme en 1788 et se retire des affaires à la fin de 1789. Ses deux fils, Antoine-Simon-Ferdinand et Henry-Louis lui succèdent (l’entreprise perdure jusqu’en 1809)."
He lost his wife just in 1788.

Huck wrote: ↑

01 Mar 2018, 21:35

Does this mean, that Pierre Francois Basan had been the artist of the Etteilla cards?

Well, as engraver and printer of these 8 plates it seems - not necessarily as original 'artist' (whose designs as engraver he would copy) -- As a print-seller himself, Alliette knew Bassan as organiser of the Mariette Auction - he mentions him in relation to such, as reported by Decker, Dummet & Depaulis in 'Wicked Pack of Cards", p80
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________
The print as listed in QUÉRARD :

https://books.google.com.tr/books?id=UK ... 22&f=false

1789 would match the ATF timeline of his first deck being printed, but the engravings and these prints may have already been readed in 1788?

From the Etteilla timeline @ ATF:
1789
Etteilla applies for a “general” patent to print his deck on 19 Jan. 1789, granted 5 Feb. 1789, registered on 13 March (DDD p. 92). A 4 page pamphlet entitled “Livre de Thoth” dated 1789 says, “See the Book of Thoth, which I am permitted to publish today, with the King’s appointment.” Also establishing Etteilla’s involvement with this deck are copies, made by their author, of letters written in Lyon by De Bonrecuille, one of the “interprètes.” On 27 November he writes to Etteilla: ‘I am very glad to hear that we will soon have the Tarot cards you have restored.’ Then on 14 March 1789: “We very satisfactorily have received the Tarot cards which you sent us...” (DDD p. 91)

I presume the November letter must be 1788, prior to the reciept of the cards in March 1789 -- perhaps the Basan prints would be used as part of his application for a general patent to print his cards made in January?

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote: ↑

28 Feb 2018, 23:14

It would be good for someone to print a coloured deck based on these -

It would indeed! With or without the adverts?

The advert on card 28 is mentioned by Levi in his Dogma and Ritual of High Magic, as translated by Waite:

In the Tarot, now become very scarce, which he engraved, we find the following naive advertisement on the twenty-eighth card the eight of clubs :

" Etteilla, professor of algebra and correctors (sic) of the modern blunders of the ancient book of Thot, lives in the Rue de l'Oseille, No. 48, Paris."

Etteilla would have certainly done better not to have corrected the blunders of which he speaks ; his books have degraded the ancient work discovered by Court de Gebelin into the domain of vulgar magic and fortune-telling by cards.

SteveM wrote: ↑

01 Mar 2018, 22:26

-- As a print-seller himself, Alliette knew Bassan as organiser of the Mariette Auction - he mentions him in relation to such, as reported by Decker, Dummet & Depaulis in 'Wicked Pack of Cards", p80

Note on p17, of "Science: Leçons théoriques et pratiques du livre de Thot", 1787:

SteveM wrote: ↑

01 Mar 2018, 22:26

The advert on card 28 is mentioned by Levi in his Dogma and Ritual of High Magic, as translated by Waite:

In the Tarot, now become very scarce, which he engraved, we find the following naive advertisement on the twenty-eighth card the eight of clubs :

" Etteilla, professor of algebra and correctors (sic) of the modern blunders of the ancient book of Thot, lives in the Rue de l'Oseille, No. 48, Paris."

Etteilla would have certainly done better not to have corrected the blunders of which he speaks ; his books have degraded the ancient work discovered by Court de Gebelin into the domain of vulgar magic and fortune-telling by cards.

Here is the original Levi text, I have pasted in the card from the Basan print, "Dogme et rituel de la haute magie par Éliphas Lévi: Rituel, Volume 2, p338/339", :

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote: ↑

28 Feb 2018, 23:14

I'm wondering about the "1788" date though; none of the text, except for a tiny subscript on the last (information) sheet, uses the medial s (long s). I could be wrong in this, it could be that some French presses started using the normal "s" everywhere already in the 1780s. I'll have to study it a bit more.

It appears to me that the great bulk of the text is in an engraved script, I think we have discussed before how the medial s did not always appear in script form, as it did in typeface - as the text is in an engraved script (I presume you are referring to the bulk of the text on plate 8?) then the use or lack of medial s does not provide a key to dating? The title on the cards themselves are all in Large and small caps, so the medial s wouldn't apply to them anyway -- so I'm not sure the lack of medial s in this case brings into question its dating --- engraved script reproduced the handwritten form, in which the medial s did not necessarily appear --

Also, according to the site below: "Long 's' fell out of use in Roman and italic typography well before the middle of the 19th century; in French the change occurred from about 1780 onwards, in English in the decades before and after 1800, and in the United States around 1820."

http://www.historyofinformation.com/exp ... hp?id=2729

Here are some examples of text from Basan's Dictionary of Engravers, 1789 (originally published in 1769) - note the use of long 'S' is used with the typeface of his main body text, but with the engraved script there is no long 'S' :


--------------------------------------------------------------
Dictionnaire des graveurs anciens et modernes depuis l'origine de la gravure. T. I. (A-L) / , par F. Basan,... Seconde édition., 1789

Thanks, Steve. France does seem to have been the earliest to abandon the medial s, but I never thought to distinguish between italic and the others. The difference is abrupt at 1800 just about everywhere - but I wonder how handwriting changed? In very old stuff people used the medial s just like in print.

But the bottom line is that Etteilla's sheet has to be what it says it is - 1788. If he were trying a bit of anachronism, why would he NOT use the medial s?

My objection is withdrawn as completely wrong-headed.

Ross G. R. Caldwell wrote: ↑

04 Mar 2018, 18:04

Thanks, Steve. France does seem to have been the earliest to abandon the medial s, but I never thought to distinguish between italic and the others. The difference is abrupt at 1800 just about everywhere - but I wonder how handwriting changed? In very old stuff people used the medial s just like in print.

Just to be clear the difference is not between italic and others - the medial S is used in Italic fonts too - it is between printing text that uses font types, and engraved text such as copperplate that reproduces handwriting - the loss of the medial S occurs in handwritten forms before it does in printed, and the lack of medial S can be found in copperplate printed text that reproduces handwriting earlier than printed text using font types -- [most commonly of course in a mix of engraved text with images] -

edited to add:

I found where we discussed this before,* on the f/b history forum, where I gave an example of cursive script without medial S from a French book on handwriting from 1720:

L' art d'ecrire par Jean Mariette:

https://books.google.fr/books?id=Zc5TAA ... 22&f=false

[There is also an earlier edition from 1698]

Is this the same Jean Mariette (Pierre-Jean Mariette) whose auction of prints was organised by Basan, and attended by Etteilla? edited to add: No, it isn't!

SteveM

*The subject arose in a discussion on why the letter shin on fool in Levi, its position and relation to the dweller on the threshold - which got diverted a little by the spelling of the grandpriestess in this deck:
In this case the obvious influence of Gebelin belied its dating

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1457073 ... cursive%22

Coloured print of the cards in Temple of Fire in Memphis layout, Basan 1788 according to BnF:

http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b5 ... %22Thot%22

Great find, Steve! The BnF's title for the page is "[Livre de Thot // ou // Collection précieuse des tableaux de la Doctrine de Mercure"; so I was wondering about the //. Did they mean possibly "II", i.e. the second version. But no, the cards are "Etteilla I" through and through. And the layout is based on Etteilla's book Lecons Theorique et Pratiques published not later than 1787
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-2IvpZ_KCU6A/T ... arker2.jpg
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-AXigxJffHmQ/T ... lePage.jpg

I guess the // does what we get from a dash.

// means a line break in the original, as we use in English when quoting poetry without the line breaks, the line breaks follow the title Basan's 1788 B&W prints in previous post, a print from the same plates I think has been cut, the 'cards' trimmed of their borders, watercoloured and pasted on the pre-printed sheet on the above 1788 Temple of Memphis:

http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b1 ... 20de%20jeu

First sheet of eight:
So it appears that Basan completed the engravings for the deck in 1788, prints such as the above were possibly used for Etteilla's application to print in 1789?

[There is no mention of Etteilla on the entries for these Basan prints - so a search on Etteilla on the BnF database will not find them, I feel very lucky to have done so! Well, luck and perseverance, I quite regularly and laboriously go through their whole digitized card collection looking for odd details or new additions]