Exhibitions

De Makerij (The Makershop) - a brand-new museum lab

From September 21, 2024

Transforming a sheet of paper into a fully-fledged playing card involves many steps and painstaking craftsmanship. The Makershop, the new museum display at the Museum of the Playing Card, provides a unique insight into the various processes a playing card-in-the-making undergoes. Besides printing the cards, the finishing is of great importance: cutting, rounding the corners, glossing, gilding and packaging. After all, playing cards are used intensively and have to stand up to a lot of wear and tear during their lifetime. Paper finishing plays a crucial role in the ultimate quality of playing cards. The 19th-century Turnhout paper manufacturers were quite inventive and were constantly looking for ways to make their cards more durable. A typical Turnhout innovation, for example, is the 'overwax’ technique, whereby a protective coat of polish is applied to the cards.

Besides the production of playing cards, The Makershop also focuses on the role of the typesetter or typographer. Working by hand and with extreme precision, they arranged lead letters side by side to print words and sentences. Their choices between capitals, lowercase letters, serifs, margins and interline spacings made typesetters not just seasoned craftsmen but true artists in their own right.

Next to The Makershop, you can enjoy a small, periodically shifting focus exhibition highlighting a particular aspect of the rich museum collection. The first edition 'Turnhout's Triumph' shows that the playing card industry depends on much more than technology alone. Before Turnhout became the playing card capital of Belgium - and far beyond - Brussels boasted that title. However, revolutions, changing borders and a healthy dose of chance caused an upheaval in the period 1750-1850. Sample books, documents and special card games illustrate how the Brussels and Turnhout workshops flourished.

With The Makershop, the Museum of the Playing Card sets the tone for the future. The display takes you through the fascinating history of the paper and playing card industry and encourages children and adults to try hands-on work for themselves.
Come and see, feel, smell and, above all, experience for yourself in this brand-new museum lab.

Long live fate!

About the art of playing

Playing cards is of all times, generations and ranks. Everyone has been playing cards, for centuries, and this wasn’t unnoticed by artists. Most people play from childhood. You endure the game alone or in company, just like in real life. You get to know your opponent, weigh up chances, make choices, come up with a strategy, and who knows, spark a flirt or romance.

Yet card players are often not portrayed very flattering: they swear, drink, argue and even fight with each other. The dark side of life. Which path do you take: do you go for the fair, quiet game where you learn skills and insights, or do you lose yourself in gambling, cheating and deceit? And what does the future bring? There are honorable winners and inglorious losers. Is life just a matter of playing your cards right or is there more to it?

With 'Long live fate!' the National Museum of the PLaying Card gives a glimpse of the role of the card game in Western art. For this exhibition the museum draws from its own collection, but also shows works from the collection that it has got on long-term loan from the National Lottery since 2019. It concerns books, game machines, paintings and graphic work by well-known and lesser-known masters, all with the theme: the card game. Part of this collection was already shown in 2019-2020 in the exhibition 'Card Players in the Arts'. The museum reopened the 'treasure room' with a selection that honours the reputation of the card game through the ages.

With works by, among others: James Ensor, Jan Moerman, Marcel Stobbaerts, Ferdinand de Braekeleer, Johan Clarysse

Former exhibitions

Sub-skin - About people, tattoos and playing cards

Exhibition - 19th of May 2022 until the 26th of February 2023

As a memory or ritual, as a statement or by mistake, as a tribute or by revenge: you take a tattoo for life, and that is often the start of a personal conversation.

Photographer Ans Brys and writer Matthias MR Declercq enter into that conversation. In fifteen portraits they focus on people and go beyond what you see. “Sub-skin” spreads wide, from the symbolism behind Koeken Tien (Ten of Diamonds) and The Ace of Spades, to a tattoo of a tarot card and a king from India.
Nothing is what it seems. A tattoo is not a drawing, it’s a story.