Italian Iron Crown Tarot. Corona Ferrea, Milan, Italy: L. Lamperti (for F. Gumppenberg), 1847

* Italian Iron Crown Tarot. Corona Ferrea, Milan, Italy: L. Lamperti (for F. Gumppenberg), 1847, the complete deck of 78 stencil coloured engraved playing cards, comprising 4 suits of 14 (French suits), each with pip cards ace-10, and 4 double-ended court cards depicting people connected with the Iron Crown, with Italian captions, jack of diamonds with printed maker's name Gumppenberg Milano, plus maker's ink stamp L. Lamperti Mil, and Lombardy tax stamp dated 1847, ace of diamonds with maker's details (Gumppenberg), plus 22 trump cards, comprising 21 trumps (bearing double-ended Roman numerals I-XXI), depicting full-length scenes from the history of the Iron Crown between 590-1558, and captioned Fool (Excusée) card, dusty, some minor marks, spotting or finger-soiling, some trumps with light discolouration to end panels, trump I with one end panel rubbed, versos pattern of blue dots & dotted flowers, each card 97 x 52 mm, 41 cards mounted with photo corners onto 2 display boards, encapsulated in clear plastic (not examined out of boards), the remainder in a plastic bag, each board 55 x 40 cm QTY: (1) NOTE: Provenance: Collection of Dudley Ollis. See Fournier Italy 57, Kaplan II, p.442-443 and https://www.wopc.co.uk/italy/solleone/corona-ferrea for the 20th century facsimile version of this pack. This original 19th century pack appears to be extremely scarce, not found in either of the above collections, nor in Cary collection, British Museum, Berry ( Playing Cards of the World ), Waddington collection, Mann ( All Cards on the Table ), or Ortiz-Patiño collection. The only other original deck found is that in: Reisinger, Tarocke , vol. 1 p.450 (the pack more fully illustrated and described on pp.447-449 is again a facsimile). Ferdinando Gumppenberg has been described as, "ingenious in the field of playing card production" (according to the publisher Osvaldo Menegazzi: see https://www.wopc.co.uk/italy/gumppenberg/ ). The World of Playing Cards website mentions that Gumppenberg’s son and successor Lattanzio Lamperti published this deck in the 1840s as a probable reissue of an earlier pack. According to the 7bellonline.it website ( https://www.7bellonline.it/cartedagioco/fabbricanti/?maker=gumppenberg ), Gumppenberg did not hand over the business to his son until 1848, yet our example has the ink stamp of L. Lamperti, indicating that the son was already in the process of taking over the business in 1847.