Sunday, July 3, 2011

Jesters and their Baubles







Jesters and their baubles.  Baubles? Yes, I believe that the name for a jester's wand on which there is a little model of the jester's head is a bauble.  Here is a page from my joker collection with nine jokers. Each jokers features a jester holding a stick or wand with a small head on it. I believe that these are called baubles and are a common tool for court fools or jesters.

Jesters' Wands are called Baubles
Jesters' Wands are called Baubles


And I'll quote Wikipedia:

A bauble was originally a stick with a weight attached, used in weighing a child's toy, but especially the mock symbol of office carried by a court jester. This fool's bauble was a baton terminating in a figure of Folly with cap and bells, and sometimes having a bladder fastened to the other end. Subsequently it became a term for anything trivial or childishly folly.More recently the term means a virtually worthless decorative object.


Here are two pairs of jokers.  Like so many decks, there are two jokers; one in black and white, the other in color.
The two top jokers have nice artwork of jesters holding cards and leaning on a ball. The back of the deck says  Beaver Creek in Colorado.  I fear that the scan of these jokers is a little fuzzy.

The lower two have two jesters decorated with the four suits (clubs, hearts, diamonds, and spades) holding their baubles.  

1 comment:

  1. The item carried by a jester is a "marotte". Marotte is the French term for a baubles carried by a fool or foolish person.

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for your input and for reading and thinking about jokers.