Click here for Part 1, here for Part 2 and here for Part 3!
The final take on exciting research revelations from the Schaffel College for Industrial Pasteboard Paraphernalia in Ryffling, Denmark on the magic tricks which artists shown on our familiar court cards have supposedly been performing for up to hundreds of years, yet unnoticed until today!
Further Pasteboard Secrets
Despite the important breakthroughs in magic and playing card history featured in the previous three episodes, some other court card motifs remain the subject of intense scholarly debate for the time being, explains visiting postgraduate fellow, Tang Acapao, who also happens to be a passionate card magic amateur. Here they are:
Jacks of Diamonds and Clubs: Pole Levitation?
In some cases, the diagonally mirrored images of all court cards make it difficult to identify the provenance of the originally featured magic trick, especially when both arms or hands would actually exercise the same movements. That’s why, in this case here, the pasteboard researchers are still debating whether the Jacks of Clubs and Diamonds are both performing an early version of the two-hands pole levitation, as junior researcher Les Kerfol speculates in his forthcoming B.A. thesis.
Queens of Clubs, Hearts and Diamonds: Flower Act?
It is also conceivable that the three Queens holding flowers so obviously inconspicuously in their hands were actually three sisters performing a lavish act with spring flowers or are shown here right after performing a choreographed triple silk-to-flower effect. Researcher Anna Gramm is still devoting much of her scholarship time to this particular florid question.
Joker King on a Bicycle: A Grand Illusion?
Another mystery yet unsolved: Why is the USPS Joker depicting another King, and why is he riding, among all vehicles in royal possession, an ordinary bicycle? “We have yet to determine when and how the first bicycle prototypes were introduced to the French and English Courts,” says the teams’ documentation officer, Sheldon Gitlip. “We are also checking some Court magicians’ papers for possibly lost information on early productions of performers using vehicles. But it really takes a maximal maven to find that needle in a haystack!”
Team leader Gioberto Robbi and his young research assistant, Farhad Fahrar, however, are on a different trail here. “The banishment of Philadelphia from Berlin and his famous exodus through the city gates got us thinking,” Robbi says. “Maybe a fun-and-riddle-loving King like Louis XIV of France rode out of his lavish ballroom at one end, while his then still unknown, but not yet incarcerated twin brother reappeared at the other end two seconds later, thus demonstrating the King’s legitimate absolute power over time and space to his astonished courtiers!” He hastens to add, “Of course this is, unlike our other findings, pure conjecture at this point.”
We hope that time will tell and that these imaginative, undisputed card experts will continue to unshuffle further secrets at Schaffel College, and you will make up your own mind about this paradox pasteboard pocus!
Be that as it may, but from now on you will certainly look at your familiar court cards from a different angle, won’t you?!
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Addendum:
Some more facts you probably didn’t know about playing cards (with a big thank you to the real Reinhard Müller!)
ZZZAUBER 
Regarding the Jack of Clubs and Diamond, I have noticed a detail that may mean something:
The Jack of Clubs does not show all fingers unlike the Jack of Diamond. So, maybe the JC is not grabbing a pole, but something bigger as a big piece of paper or cardboard that can’t be seen in the entire picture due to lack of room. So, the JC may be showing a different trick; maybe a “torn and restore” piece of newspaper.
By the way, the JD may be showing a “cut and restore rope” since the background black colour of the supposed pole are not surrounded by the fingers. It seems grabbing a rope, and the sort of horn above may represent a blade that cuts the rope…
Who knows…
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