Three dog playing cards Victorian animal families game - stock illustration

Meet the dogs. Here are Mr. Dog, Mrs. Dog and Baby Pup, one of seventeen animal families in a Victorian card game called Noah's Ark, a sort of 'Happy families'. They are original, by the manufacturer Thomas de la Rue, from a pack recently found in a very old attic. They are printed by chromolithography, the print method of the time. The game of Noah's Ark consists of 17 animal families (father, mother and baby animal), and the complete pack includes extra cards explaining the rules. While the idea is to get complete families on to the Ark, there is a possibility to go in 'one short' – and leave the baby behind. Below are links to more animal familes, plus other antique / historic playing cards (including some from Bernhard Dondorf's rare 1895 'Shakespeare' deck): .