05/01/2026
More about our Piedmont Tarot deck.
What follows is the result of a research rabbit hole on the Piedmont tradition… Buckle up 🕳️
Stabilimento già Fratelli Armanino, Roma. Tarocco Piemontese. Export issue with “Carte per l’Estero” stamp. Color lithography. c. 1920s.
A Rome-period continuation of the Armanino Genova Tarocco Piemontese pattern, this deck closely corresponds in design, line structure, and color logic to the Armanino Genova issue of 1906, and also relates to the Armanino Tarocco Piemontese 1917/1922 issue with the same green backs.
Stefano Vergnano is especially important to this localized Piedmontese design vocabulary. His decks introduce and consolidate many features that become characteristic of the Piedmontese tarot: Il Matto chasing a butterfly, Il Bagatto with his implements, the Devil with a face in the abdomen, and the Ace of Cups as a bowl or vase of flowers and fruit.
This later double-ended Tarocco Piemontese is best understood as a commercial standardization of Vergano’s earlier Piedmontese iconography into a reversible playing-card format.
The Armaninos established an important engraving, lithographic, and typographic business in Genoa from 1840 to 1917, with occasional ventures into publishing. Around 1917 the excessive cost of raw materials, especially paper, together with the government monopoly on the sale of playing cards, led to the company’s collapse.
Fratelli Armanino dissolved c 1917, and the company’s playing-card stock and machinery were transferred to a Rome-based firm already engaged in similar manufacture, which continued operations under the same name.
This deck is an early Rome-period continuation of the Armanino Genova Tarocco Piemontese pattern, likely using transferred stock, machinery, and production models from the Genoa operation.
