OK, I have been unable to scan the tiny picture upon a postcard- the size is aprox 10mm x 20- so you might imagine my problem.
I have found some facts though. The date is 1580 not 1530 as I had thought (or wrongly magnified from the postcard)
It appears in the very expensive portfolio by Jerome Brooks called Tobacco:It's History-Illustrated by the Books and Manuscripts in the Library Of George Arents. The price cited was $2500- I love Tarot History but not enough to fork that out.
There is another book called
The History of Smoking written in 1931 by the very grand moniker- Count Egon Ceasar Corti who gives the argument of why the printing press was the driving force behind the use of Tobacco in Europe and it's so called medicinal use- and the connection with playing card printing.
You can read Peter C Mancell's
Tales Tobacco Told in the 16th Century Europe
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_q ... _n9460488/
Yet none of those plants attracted as much attention among European printers as tobacco. From its initial reception as an herb used in Native American rituals to its promotion as a cure for all sorts of diseases to its eventual condemnation as a weed that caused moral turpitude, tobacco elicited a startling range of deeply felt responses in early modern Europe.
One such magical remedy was that Tobacco cured syphilis- which brings me to the earliest Tarot de Marseille like deck called the Noblet
What is that appendage in the left hand? Apparently there were pamphlets in France, railing against drunkards, with an images linking smoking to drinking and playing cards.(1600-1610)
I do not know why the Tobacco Merchant may have become the LLBatelevr in 1650 (or perhaps a little earlier) but it may explain the green thing in the sack on the Hadar reproduction- the knife that appears as common to Tarot de Marseille type cards. it certainly explains the emphasis on the plant in the ground. Basteleur = baastel" which means a conjurer's trick. Life is all smoke and mirrors maybe.Or maybe that Tarot was one of earliest spin doctors approach to product advertising. Maybe it is smoking God.(Hallucinating) Interesting though, I think.
~Lorredan