From Surf Wiki (app.surf) — the open knowledge base

Batons (suit)

Latin playing card suit

Summary

Latin playing card suit

Field	Value
image	Seme di bastoni carte trentine.svg
image_size	30
image_alt	Symbol from Trentine pattern
caption	Symbol from Trentine pattern
native_name	{{Plainlist
deck	{{Plainlist
invented	15th century

Spanish-suited playing cards
Italian-suited playing cards
Portuguese-suited playing cards
Kabufuda

Suit of batons from an 18th-century Venetian card game.

Batons or clubs is one of the four suits of playing cards in the standard Latin deck along with the suits of cups, coins and swords. 'Batons' is the name usually given to the suit in Italian-suited cards where the symbols look like batons. 'Clubs' refers to the suit in Spanish-suited cards where the symbols look more like wooden clubs.

Before 1800, French cardmakers, who also made Spanish card games, called them cartes à bâtons. Symbol on Italian pattern cards: [[File:Seme bastoni carte bergamasche.svg|5px]] Symbol on Spanish pattern cards: [[File:Seme bastoni carte napoletane.svg|14px]] Symbol on French Aluette (Spanish-)pattern cards: [[File:Seme bastoni carte aluette.svg|28px]]

Characteristics

The suit of batons is believed to have derived from Chinese money-suited cards' String of cash coins suit being misinterpreted as polo-sticks by the Muslims when the cards came into contact with the Islamic world. This misinterpretation as sticks is also the case for Mahjong's suit of Bamboo sticks. Since polo was an obscure sport in Europe, the sticks further developed into cudgels in Spain and batons in Italy.

The interpretation and arrangement of the pips helps to subdivide the Latin-suit systems:

Italian-suited: Intersecting batons
Spanish-suited: Non-intersecting cudgels (normally with exception of the Three of Clubs)
Portuguese-suited: Intersecting cudgels

In Spanish, the batons are called bastos; and in Italian, bastoni. In cartomancy and occultist circles, the suit of batons is usually called the suit of wands.

Portuguese-suited playing cards were traded to Japan in the mid-16th century which influenced the development of Karuta where the 48-card Komatsufuda, 75-card Unsun Karuta, and 40-card Kabufuda decks still maintain this suit.

Gallery

Spanish pattern

The gallery below shows a suit of clubs from a Spanish-suited deck of 48 cards. The pack is of the Castilian pattern:

Italian pattern

The gallery below shows a suit of batons from an Italian-suited deck of 52 cards. The pack is of the Bresciane pattern:

Komatsufuda pattern

The image below shows a suit of clubs from a Komatsufuda deck of 48 cards:

Unsun karuta pattern

The image below shows a suit of clubs from an Unsun karuta deck of 75 cards:

Kabufuda pattern

The gallery below shows a suit of clubs from a Kabufuda deck of 40 cards:

References

Dummett, Michael. ''A Wicked Pack of Cards: Origins of the Occult Tarot.'' Bloomsbury (1996), p. 47.

Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

card-suits

Want to explore this topic further?

Ask Mako anything about Batons (suit) — get instant answers, deeper analysis, and related topics.

Research with Mako

Free with your Surf account

Content sourced from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

This content may have been generated or modified by AI. CloudSurf Software LLC is not responsible for the accuracy, completeness, or reliability of AI-generated content. Always verify important information from primary sources.

Report