Playing Cards for Whist/Bridge - King of Hearts

Arnold Schönberg’s card game for Whist/Bridge was designed around 1910. It initially conforms to the convention of visual allocation horizontally using the symbolism of the characters on the cards and their attributes and vertically using the colored symbol. The coloring and ornamentation of the characters are more associative here, and a difference is only recognisable between female (Queens using colored areas) and male (Jacks and Kings using dots). He invented a system of double pictures for the characters in which the images are crossed over and the horizontal and diagonal axes are used for the reflection. Schönberg therefore broke free from the strict mirror imagery which characterises the “Wiener Werkstätte” cards by Ditha Moser from 1906, for example, without abandoning it.