Estimate

5.000 - 8.000

Session 3

17 December 2025

Hammer Price

Description

Rawhide, painted in red and black pigments
Comprising 39 cards following the Spanish deck structure, depicting copas, oros, bastos and espadas with stylised geometric and figurative decoration
Three cards from the suit of copas with old handwritten annotations in Portuguese, identifying “Dama da Copas”, “Valete” and “Rei de Copas”
South America, 19th century
(missing the As de Copas and Dos de Oros; including one unidentified additional card; some pigment wear)

12,5x10 cm (carta)

Additional Information

The comparative study of indigenous playing cards from the southern regions of South America shows that sets made from rawhide, painted in red and black pigments and following the traditional Spanish system, are characteristic of productions by groups of the Southern Cone during the nineteenth century, particularly the Aónikenk (Tehuelche). The closest parallel to the present set is the 39-card deck preserved at the Museo de América in Madrid, whose attribution has been discussed between Mapuche and Patagonian production. The research compiled by Mateo Martinic indicates that decks of this type, traditionally described as “Araucanian”, are in fact Patagonian examples, collected in Punta Arenas in the mid-nineteenth century.
The three handwritten annotations in Portuguese found on our set (“Dama da Copas”, “Valete” and “Rei de Copas”) suggest that the deck later passed through the hands of Portuguese-speaking owners, probably already in a collecting context in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, without affecting the typological reading of the piece. The technical and decorative characteristics follow the repertoire described by Martinic, both in the use of pigments and support and in the stylised geometric and figurative treatment of the four Spanish suits.

Literature:
MARTINIC, Mateo. “El juego de naipes entre los Aónikenk”. Anales del Instituto de la Patagonia, Serie Ciencias Sociales, Vol. 17, Punta Arenas (Chile), 1987.