Sensuous learning for practical judgment in professional practice volume 1 arts based methods elena
Volume 1 Arts based Methods Elena P. Antonacopoulou
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Sensuous Learning for Practical Judgment in Professional Practice Volume 2 Arts based Interventions Elena P. Antonacopoulou
SENSUOUS LEARNING FOR PRACTICAL JUDGMENT IN PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE
Volume 1: Arts-based Methods
Edited
by
ELENA P. ANTONACOPOULOU AND STEVEN S. TAYLOR
Palgrave Studies in Business, Arts and Humanities
Series Editors
Samantha Warren Faculty of Business and Law
University of Portsmouth Portsmouth, UK
Steven
S. Taylor Foisie School of Business
Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Worcester, MA, USA
Business has much to learn from the arts and humanities, and vice versa. Research on the links between the arts, humanities and business has been occurring for decades, but it is fragmented across various business topics, including: innovation, entrepreneurship, creative thinking, the creative industries, leadership and marketing.
A variety of diferent academic streams have explored the links between the arts, humanities and business, including: organizational aesthetics, arts-based methods, creative industries, and arts-based research etc. Te feld is now a mature one but it remains fragmented. Tis series is the frst of its kind to bring these streams together and provides a “go-to” resource on arts, humanities and business for emerging scholars and established academics alike. Tis series will include original monographs and edited collections to further our knowledge of topics across the feld.
More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/15463
Elena P. Antonacopoulou · Steven S. Taylor Editors
Sensuous Learning for Practical Judgment in Professional Practice
Tis work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifcally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microflms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
Te use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifc statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
Te publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. Te publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional afliations.
Cover illustration: miljko/E+/Getty
Tis Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG
Te registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
In memory of Grete Wennes, a pioneer in the feld of organizational aesthetics, our colleague in this project, and our very dear friend, who was taken from us far too soon. We miss her very much. May she rest in peace.
Sensuous Learning Trough Arts-Based Methods: An Introduction 1
Steven S. Taylor and Elena P. Antonacopoulou
Sensuous Learning: What It Is and Why It Matters in Addressing the Ineptitude in Professional Practice 13 Elena P. Antonacopoulou
Using Music to Activate and Develop Leader Character
Mary Crossan, Cassandra Ellis and Corey Crossan
Using Choir Conducting to Improve Leadership Practice
Niina Koivunen and Tamar Parush
Using Choral Singing to Improve Employee Well-Being and Social Cohesion in the Norwegian Public Sector
Fay Giæver
Using Body Sounds as a Coaching Tool to Promote Individual Growth in Brazil 117
Isabella Sacramento, Frode Heldal and Ricardo Cariello de Almeida
Using Arts-Based Inquiry as a Way to Communicate Creatively in Uncovering the Future
Cecilie Meltzer
Using Epic Poems and Creative Drama to Develop Realistic Optimism Among Undergraduate Students in Greece
Irene Nikandrou
139
167
Using “Te Staged Cocktail Party” to Improve Leaders’ Social Interaction in the Norwegian Military 195
Kristian Firing, Kåre Inge Skarsvåg and Tatiana Chemi
Learning from Arts: Using Abstract Painting to Discover New Understandings and Approaches Tat Are Relevant for Both Personal Development and Consulting Practice 221
Pleuntje Van Meer
Using Arts-Based Methods to Explore Learning in an Individual with Systemizing Bias
Andrew Mountfeld
Conclusion—Arts-Based Methods for Sensuous Learning: Questions and Quality
Steven S. Taylor and Elena P. Antonacopoulou
Notes on Contributors
Elena P. Antonacopoulou is Professor of Organizational Behaviour at the University of Liverpool Management School where she leads GNOSIS—a research initiative advancing impactful collaborative research in management and organization studies. Her principal research expertise lies in the areas of Organisational Change, Learning, and Knowledge Management with a focus on the Leadership implications. Her research continues to advance cutting-edge ideas and thought leadership as well as, new methodologies for studying social complexity and is strengthened by her approach; working with leading international researchers, practitioners, and policymakers collaboratively. Elena’s work is published widely in leading international journals and edited books and she held Editorship and Associate Editor roles for a range of journals.
Tatiana Chemi (Ph.D.), is Associate Professor at Aalborg University, where she works in the feld of artistic learning and creative processes. She is the author of many published articles and reports and is also the author of Artbased Approaches. A Practical Handbook to Creativity at Work, Fokus Forlag, 2006, In the Beginning Was the Pun: Comedy and Humour in Samuel Beckett’s Teatre, Aalborg University Press, 2013 and
Te Art of Arts Integration, Aalborg University Press, 2014; A Teatre Laboratory Approach to Pedagogy and Creativity: Odin Teatret and Group Learning, Palgrave, 2018; with Jensen, J. B. & Hersted, L., Behind the Scenes of Artistic Creativity, Frankfurt, Peter Lang, 2015. With Xiangyun Du, she edited Arts-based Methods and Organisational Learning: Higher Education Around the World, Palgrave (2018) and Arts-based Methods in Education Around the World, River Publisher (2017). She is currently involved in research examining artistic creativity cross-culturally, arts-partnerships in schools, theatre laboratory and the role of emotions in learning.
Corey Crossan is a Research Assistant at the Ivey Business School, Western University. Her current research is focused on the character model discussed in this chapter and she is developing workshops designed to develop and cultivate the various character dimensions. She recently completed her M.A. in Kinesiology at Western University. Her thesis titled “A Simulated Walk in Nature: Testing Predictions from the Attention Restoration Teory” is being prepared for publication. She completed B.Sc. at Eastern Michigan University with a focus in Sports Medicine while also competing on a golf scholarship in the NCAA Division 1. Competing in elite sports has played a large role and has made a major impact on her life, infuencing her research interests today. Her current research interest in leader character is fueled by her interest in personal growth within elite organizations and sports teams, helping individuals become the best they can be. She will be applying for Ph.D. programs with a research focus on leadership character development.
Dr. Mary Crossan is a Distinguished University Professor and Professor of Strategic Leadership at the Ivey Business School, Western University. Her research on leadership character, organizational learning and strategic renewal, and improvisation is published in the top management journals including the Academy of Management Review, Strategic Management Journal, Leadership Quarterly, and Organization Science. Her article on “Developing Leadership Character in Business Programs” was awarded the Outstanding Article of the Year for 2013 in the Academy of Management Learning and Education. Te book
Developing Leadership Character is a culmination of the team’s research on leader character. Her textbook Strategic Analysis and Action is widely used in strategy courses. She has been identifed as one of the top 40 case-writers in the world and has a keen interest in innovative learning methodologies particularly around developing leadership character. In a joint venture with Te Second City, she developed a management video entitled Improvise to Innovate.
Ricardo Cariello de Almeida is a Ph.D. and Master’s graduate in History of Social Ideas from the Universidade Federal Fluminense. He is also a psychology and psychotherapy graduate from the Univerisdade Federal Fluminense with 27 years’ experience. He is qualifed in Biosynthesis and reichian therapy.
Cassandra Ellis is a Ph.D. Candidate and Lecturer in Kinesiology at Western University. She studies physical activity with specifc focus on making activity pleasurable to improve adherence through the manipulation of factors, such as music. Her research encompasses a vast psychological understanding of why and how children, youth, athletes, and sedentary individuals alike perceive physical activity. Her article on “Fun and Physical Activity: Environmental Infuences for Stimulating Fun” was published in Inspire: Te Journal of Literacy and Numeracy for Ontario, which is used for parties involved in our children’s education and pedagogical programming. Her study, “Understanding Children’s Perceptions of Bicycle Safety Training” was published in Germany and used social marketing campaign principles to delve deeper into the insights of why children choose active transportation and what infuences their decision. Today, her research focusses on how music can enhance an individual’s performance and afective experience. As a Lecturer, she uses yoga and mindfulness training techniques to explore how being aware of oneself in the present moment can positively afect the mind and body. As a leader in the ftness industry, her main objective is to encourage people to be active and adopt a healthy lifestyle. She contributed to the section of this chapter on how music stimulates character development.
Kristian Firing (Ph.D.), currently serves as Associate Professor at the Royal Norwegian Air Force Academy and at the Institute of Teacher Education at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. Kristian has a great passion for teaching. He loves to contribute to the students learning process. Beyond the classroom, he likes to bring artbased methods of learning into other contexts such as military exercises. Trough his coaching he tries to practice the art of meeting, walk through the learning process together with them, and leave them with increased self-efcacy. His areas of research interest include leadership development, experience-based learning, art-based learning, refection, coaching, writing, social psychology, mindfulness, sport, and many more. Kristian recently published a new book titled Te Key to Academic Writing: Practice Makes Perfect. He is involved in research investigating debriefng among fghter pilots and is currently exploring Practice Makes Perfect in a variety of contexts.
Fay Giæver is Associate Professor in Organizational Psychology at the Department of Psychology, Te Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). Her research focuses mainly on the role played by emotions in organizational change. In addition to exploring the emotional dimension of adopting arts-based methods to achieve organizational change, she has been involved in research projects exploring issues such as sickness absence/presence and work adjustment for employees with mental health issues. Recently, she has been interested in the ways in which pro-environmental behavior can be promoted inside and outside of the organization, focusing particularly on the role played by emotions in ecopreneurship. She has worked closely with industrial partners throughout and aims for her work to have practical, as well as scientifc, impact.
Frode Heldal is currently working as Associate Professor at NTNU, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, and holds a Ph.D. and M.Sc. in engineering from the same university. Heldal has for four years led the Master’s Program in Leadership, and Technology, teaching engineers to become leaders. Trough this program, he has ofered lectures in entrepreneurship, team leadership and human resource management. He has a special attention to practical work and live research
settings, employing practical methods to help teams, leaders, and managers to improve their practice.
Niina Koivunen is Associate Professor at the Department of Management, University of Vaasa and Docent at Turku School of Economics at University of Turku, Finland. Her research focuses on leadership, leadership development and organizational aesthetics and has been published in academic journals including Scandinavian Journal of Management, Leadership, Organizational Aesthetics, Journal of Management & Organization, and Journal of Consumption, Markets, and Culture and in several edited volumes. She has also edited a book Creativity and the Contemporary Economy, together with Prof. Alf Rehn.
Cecilie Meltzer is Associate Professor in Arts-based Learning at Oslo Metropolitan University (OsloMet). She has a Master of Arts from the National Academy of Arts, a Master in Special Needs Education from Oslo University and is a certifed Psychotherapist in Art therapy at the European Association for Psychotherapy. Her research areas focus on how art-based learning methods and increased process awareness can release latent resources, support individual and group creativity, and promote change and development in schools and working life. In her articles, she shares her methodological approach to arts-based learning when teaching students at the Department of Vocational Teacher Education. She has published two articles and one digital story in Organizational Aesthetics (2015): “Understanding the Ambiguity and Uncertainty in Creative Processes When Using Arts-Based Methods in Education and Working Life”, and (2016): “Life in Noah’s Ark: Using Animal Figures as an Arts-based Projective Technique in Group Work to Enhance Leadership Competence”.
Andrew Mountfeld was born in the UK and spent his early childhood in the US. He completed the dual degree economics and business administration programme in the UK, Germany, and France at the European School of Business university partnership, and subsequently graduated with a masters degree from Bocconi University, Milan. He holds a research masters from HEC Paris and the University of Oxford, where he worked on emergent strategy and its relation to
organization. He completed his doctorate at Ashridge Business School. He was a member of the international advisory board of the University of Maastricht Faculty of Economics and Business, and now serves on the advisory board of Business Intelligence and Smart Services Institute (BISS), in Heerlen, NL.
He started his career with a major Swiss pharmaceutical company as an assistant to the board, was seconded to a global strategy consulting company, but then returned to the pharmaceutical industry with management assignments in business development and fnance. He then moved to PwC Consulting and was made partner in 1996. He was managing director of Horváth & Partners in Switzerland from 2004 to 2015, where he was a partner in the global frm. He is currently Chairman of the Brightcon Group.
He has been a lecturer on the Strathclyde Graduate Business School M.B.A. programme, was a professor of strategy at PHW Zurich, and has been module leader on ETH Zurich M.B.A. programme since 2004.
He is the editor of two books on strategy practice, and the author of a regular column in German and Swiss business publications.
Dr. Irene Nikandrou is Assistant Professor of Human Resource Mana gement (HRM) at the Department of Marketing and Communication of the Athens University of Economics and Business (AUEB). She has a wide teaching experience both in the academic feld and in business, where she teaches Management, Human Resource Management and Organizational Behavior at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels. She has done extensive research in the feld of HRM and OB and she is a member of the CRANET Project team in Greece. Her current research interests focus on the felds of positive organizational scholarship and more specifcally on organizational virtuousness, positive psychological capital, and art-based training. Her work has been published in leading journals like Te International Journal of HRM, Journal of Managerial Psychology, Management Decision, Personnel Review, Human Resource Management Journal, Employee Relations, and Human Resource Development International. Parallel to her research activities she has worked as management consultant in numerous projects.
Dr. Tamar Parush teaches at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Haifa, and at the Department of Human Resource Management, Sapir College, Israel. Her interests include managerial fashions, movements and ideologies; professional service frms as producers and carriers of management ideas; the relationship between the felds of art and business; and the role of metaphors in organizational discourse and in the social construction of leadership.
Isabella Sacramento has a Ph.D. in International Business from COPPEAD—Federal University in Rio de Janeiro. She has over 15 years’ experience teaching in M.B.A. programs and 10 years’ experience in business consulting, having completed communications and teaching courses from École Superieure de Rouen, Instituto Tecnológico Autônomo de México and Harvard Business School. Her work explores innovative art-based methods (rhythm, dance, storytelling) to support learning soft skills and create energetic classes that foster refexivity. She is fuent in Spanish, English, German, and French besides her native Portuguese. At Fluminense Federal University, Isabella works as Associate Professor in Entrepreneurship.
Kåre Inge Skarsvåg (M.A.), currently serves as a Major at the Royal Norwegian Airforce where he conducts teaching, coaching, and research. Kåre’s passion is leader development. He loves to contribute to the students’ learning process, embracing the Socratic method of asking questions to make the students refect upon important leadership questions. He constantly tries to broaden the leaders’ perspectives by asking existential questions and challenging the status quo. He thinks that philosophy can contribute to leader development beyond normal class-room teaching. He loves to study leader development from a philosophical perspective. By focusing the students’ attention on the questions rather than the answers, he hopes to help the students to emerge as leaders who themselves can be refective and attentive towards how they conduct their leadership. His focus of research is coaching, holistic debriefng and art-based methods in leader development. He is currently writing a book titled “Coaching in Crises”. As a “lover of wisdom” (the greek translation of philosophia), he will focus on those areas in his upcoming research projects.
Steven S. Taylor is Professor of Leadership and Creativity at the WPI Foisie School of Business. His research is focused in two areas: organizational aesthetics and refective practice. Te former applies art-based scholarship and practice to management and organizations. Te latter focuses on the ability to analyse our own actions and learn how to be more efective, ethical, and artful as managers and leaders. His research has been published in academic journals including Organization Studies, Leadership Quarterly, Leadership, Academy of Management Learning and Education, and Journal of Management Studies. Taylor is the author of Leadership Craft, Leadership Art, You’re a Genius: Using Refective Practice to Master the Craft of Leadership, and Staging Organization: Plays as Critical Commentaries on Workplace Life and is the founding editor of the journal Organizational Aesthetics.
Pleuntje Van Meer is a Netherlands-based leadership and culture change consultant, advising organisations on integrity and values. She completed her action research doctorate in Organisational Change at Ashridge Business School. As a scholar, she explores extended ways of knowing and imaginal knowing by inquiring into her arts practice, to develop refexive practice. She is curious to apply creativity in learning and convinced that this impacts our potential for deep change.
List of Figures
Sensuous Learning: What It Is and Why It Matters in Addressing the Ineptitude in Professional Practice
Fig. 1 Character and virtue in professions (Adapted from Antonacopoulou 2016)
Fig. 2 Te ethos of professionalism as a code of chivalry
20
24
Fig. 3 Refexivity—reconnecting ways of seeing, being and becoming a professional 27
Fig. 4 Practising refexivity to realize the impact of professional practice 27
Using Music to Activate and Develop Leader Character
Fig. 1 Leader character framework
Fig. 2 Leader character activation and development
Fig. 3 Heart rate variability and emotions
Using Arts-Based Inquiry as a Way to Communicate Creatively in Uncovering the Future
Fig. 1 Te refection
Fig. 2 An indistinct being
Fig. 3 Te tree stem
Fig. 4 Fear of ‘fying’
Fig. 5 Te abyss
Using “Te Staged Cocktail Party” to Improve Leaders’ Social Interaction in the Norwegian Military
Fig. 1 Te steps in the staged cocktail party activity
Fig. 2 People participating in the cocktail party 204
Learning from Arts: Using Abstract Painting to Discover New Understandings and Approaches Tat Are Relevant for Both Personal Development and Consulting Practice
Fig. 1 Free mandala drawings
Fig. 2 Inside-out, October 2014, oil on paper, 40 cm × 60 cm 227
Fig. 3 Outside-in, October 2014, oil on paper, 40 cm × 60 cm 228
Fig. 4 Dancer and shadow, November 2014, oil on canvas, 1.20 m × 0.80 m 229
Using Arts-Based Methods to Explore Learning in an Individual with Systemizing Bias
Fig. 1 Tree circles of inquiry approach
Fig. 2 “32 Doors”, Ashridge, Winter 2010
Fig. 3 Transposition of music piece
Fig. 4 Trusting the process
List of Tables
Using Choir Conducting to Improve Leadership Practice
Table 1 Contradictory leadership demands
Using Arts-Based Inquiry as a Way to Communicate Creatively in Uncovering the Future
Table 1 Total scores from 4 groups/31 participants after the course Creative Communication
Sensuous Learning Through Arts-Based Methods: An Introduction
Steven S. Taylor and Elena P. Antonacopoulou
Te recent launch of a major report (In Professions We Trust ) in the British House of Lords, highlights that the eroding trust in professions and professionals (bankers, doctors, lawyers), is a grand challenge of our times (Blond et al. 2015). Tis challenge cannot be addressed through more regulation using codes of ethical conduct or indeed calls for moral action to underpin professional practice (Oakley and Cocking 2006). Te appropriateness of these proposed ‘measures’ to address the persistence of professional misconduct (Gabbioneta et al. 2014) suggests that there is urgent need to explicate the conditions professional practice itself may create, that permits malpractice to co-exist, almost as an inseparable part of everyday practice.
S. S. Taylor (*)
WPI Foisie School of Business, Worcester, MA, USA
e-mail: sst@wpi.edu
E. P. Antonacopoulou
University of Liverpool Management School (ULMS), Liverpool, UK
E. P. Antonacopoulou and S. S. Taylor (eds.), Sensuous Learning for Practical Judgment in Professional Practice, Palgrave Studies in Business, Arts and Humanities, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98863-4_1
In this Volume, we show how Sensuous Learning can address this challenge in the way Art-based methods can foster refexivity in everyday professional practice. We will explicate in Chapter 2 what Sensuous Learning means and why refexivity ofers the appropriate response in improving practical judgement in professional practice. We will also demonstrate through the subsequent chapters how art-based methods have been deployed to support the improvement in professional practice. In this introduction to Volume 1, we want to explicate why phronesis (practical judgement) as a mode of knowledge is central to the ethos of professionalism. We problematize, therefore, the focus on expert knowledge as the criterion that defnes professional competence and instead, argues that the fundamental challenge is cultivating character and conscience, which this volume elaborates.
How do we go about cultivating character and conscience? How do people learn character and conscience? Tese are not small questions and we should frst start with the broader questions of what we mean by learning? In its broadest sense, learning is defned in neuroscience as physical changes in our neural networks (Zull 2006). Tis is a useful starting place as it makes no normative judgment as to whether the learning is good or bad, right or wrong, intentional, or accidental. In contrast, the ideas of cultivating character and conscience are laden with normative judgements, thus we are not interested in just any sort of learning, but rather a particular type of learning.
Te most infuential conceptualization of this sort of learning is the work of Argyris and Schön (Argyris 1990, 1993; Argyris et al. 1985; Argyris and Schön 1974, 1996; Schön 1983, 1987). Tey conceive of learning as a largely cognitive activity in which learners’ theories about the world are analyzed and changed, which leads to associated changes in behaviour. Teir seminal work has shown how professionals’ behaviour is often grounded in unconscious governing values and associated theories-in-use which can inhibit learning.
Springborg (Springborg 2018; Springborg and Ladkin 2018) ofers an up-to-date review of this debate and argues that the values that govern our behaviour—the very stuf that character and conscience would seemingly be based in—are embodied and are based on sensory knowing of the world. He argues that arts-based and somatic spiritual
methods can work directly with the sensory templates (the primary, embodied metaphors for how we make sense of our world) that are the foundation of the values that drive our behaviours. However, this analysis does not address the impact of learning (be it embodied or cognitive) in shaping practical judgements.
A review of the knowledge base of professional practice reveals the centrality of practical judgement as a mode of knowledge. Drawing on Aristotle’s account in Nicomachean Ethics (NE 1139) of the fve modes of knowledge—Techne (technical knowledge), Episteme (scientifc knowledge), Phronesis (practical knowledge), Sophia (wisdom), and Nous (pure apprehending)—the analysis in this volume will make the case for an extension to the way professionalism is understood. Tis calls for recognizing the criticality of phronesis as a mode of knowledge in professional practice and the foundation for restoring the ethos of professionalism ultimately refected in the conduct of professionals. If we do not attend to this, there is a danger that we can perpetuate promising the value of learning in changing behaviour but failing to show how it cultivates the responsibility and accountability to learn to serve the common good. Tis is critical, because sensory templates alone do not attend to the choice to conduct one’s self with the professional aptitude their public accountability also calls for. Tis is why for us the challenge remains to show how we create modes of learning that can address what otherwise is recognized as the disease of our times— professional ineptitude.
Professional ineptitude as Antonacopoulou (2018a) explains must neither be confused with incompetence, nor defensive mechanisms that prevent the capacity to consistently act with professional ethos. Instead, professional ineptitude is the absence of a ‘character-infused response to the way one chooses to act which calls for the engagement of one’s conscience’ in doing so. Tis is why we make the case for refexivity as a process of learning and changing that can directly address and improve practical judgements in professional practice (Antonacopoulou 2004).
In various ways, the idea that arts-based methods can access a diferent form of knowing has been at the heart of theorizing the relationship between the arts and learning in organizations. Te grounding is the feld of organizational aesthetics (Strati 1992, 1999; Taylor and
Hansen 2005), which works from a conception of aesthetics as being based in sensuous knowing (Baumgarten 1750/1936; Vico 1744/1948). Te feld recognizes an epistemological diference between sensuous, embodied knowing and logical, cognitive knowing. Darso (2004) used Teory U (Senge et al. 2005) to describe how arts-based methods allow people in organizations to access and work with their embodied, sensuous knowing. Taylor and Ladkin (2009) ofer a model of four diferent ways that arts-based methods are used in managerial and leadership development, all of which are based in using the arts to access and work with embodied, sensuous knowing.
Although there is considerable agreement about the epistemological diference that arts-based methods are based in, many questions remain about arts-based methods and how they might be used to cultivate character and conscience. One need only look at the world around us to see that simply doing art doesn’t ensure that that character and conscience are developed. Making or audiencing art may well inherently produce learning in the neuroscientifc sense of physical changes in our neuro-networks, but our question is how does one focus that learning into the development of character and conscience in such a way that would improve professional judgment?
In order to dig deeper into this question and the related issues, we have invited contributions from around the world from scholars, executives, and artists who are actively engaged in using arts-based methods to support personal and professional development as well as, wider organizational and institutional changes. By forming a network (GNOSIS 2020) we collectively set ourselves the challenge by 2020 to have advanced an agenda that makes a diference in addressing this challenge of cultivating character and conscience in professional practices. In other words, we have sought to create a momentum akin to what the Sisters Hope (see Hallberg 2015) promote with the notion of the ‘Sensuous Society’. In the course of the last 4 years we have shared our art-based methods during our gatherings and in doing so started a collective learning process of exposing our conceptual understanding of what we are doing when using art-based methods to capture the process of learning, and ofer evidence of the impacts.
Te chapters in this frst volume capture some of the most cuttingedge ways in which art-based methods have been deployed. Te chapters individually demonstrate how the authors have designed and delivered a given art-based method in a particular context and the learning that emanated from this process. Collectively the chapters ofer new insights about the impacts of art-based methods (thereafter ABM) in supporting new modes of learning. Specifcally, they show that a diferent kind of learning is taking place that goes beyond hitherto conceptualization either as cognitive or embodied.
Collectively the chapters begin to show what is theorized as a new mode of learning defned as Sensuous Learning. We explicate in this Volume 1 this new learning theory by explaining what Sensuous Learning is and why it matters in addressing practical judgements in professional practice. In the second chapter, Elena P. Antonacopoulou ofers the theoretical foundations for this new learning theory and explains the links between practical judgement, character, and conscience by extending previous accounts of embodiment focusing on the role of the senses. She demonstrates that although accounts of ‘sensory’, ‘sensuous’ knowledge, and learning (Springborg 2018; Hallberg 2015; Strati 1999) have been referred to in the extant literature, these accounts, have mostly been orientated towards aesthetic interpretations promoting greater attention to the role of the senses. She explicates that ‘Sensuous Learning’ as a new learning theory extends beyond the senses to better understand the role of sensations and their contribution in forming a new kind of ‘intelligence’ defned as ‘CORE intelligence CQ ’. Te uniqueness of this formulation of sensuousness is that it explicates why refexivity is a critical and essential aspect of the impacts that Sensuous Learning is particularly intended to foster in supporting practical judgement in professional practice by cultivating character and conscience.
Te empirical chapters start with Mary Crossan, Cassandra Ellis, and Corey Crossan’s Using Music to Activate and Develop Leader Character. Teir chapter presents the way songs selected by delegates on an MBA program ofer a basis for exploring how character traits are recognized and lived. It extends earlier accounts of the power of music in advancing
well-being. It ofers a basis of supporting Sensuous Learning by inquiring deeper into the space between ‘stimulus and response’ particularly in the way choices and not only judgements are formed. Sensuous Learning in Crossan et al.’s account, captures the way music sensitizes MBA students to lead with character, to bring to their professional practice notes, melodies, and lyrics that refect the essence of their humanity. Such an approach to Sensuous Learning can support professional practice by exposing deeper spaces guiding judgement formation to strengthen the choices to act with professionalism.
We stay with music in Niina Koivunen and Tamar Parush’s Using Choir Conducting to Improve Leadership Practice. Teir chapter extends references to leader development through music by focusing on conducting and presenting the approach to leadership development in Executive Programs at Oxford University in the UK, drawing on the work of the famous Danish conductor—Peter Hanke. Tis valuable analysis is a rich empirical examination of how conducting and thus creating music by coordinating the voices of professional singers, provides an illustration of how to extend an invitation in ‘music making’. In other words, this marks Sensuous Learning in the way inviting others’ contribution one’s practical judgment refects the balancing acts between being in control and surrendering control, being attentive to the rules and being playful. As Koivunen and Parush convincingly demonstrate in their analysis, this provides a fresh account of how leadership can be developed in ways that enable cultivating one’s humanity, extending indirectly the idea of leader character presented in the earlier chapter, by demonstrating how leading is a combination of heroic and post-heroic characteristics. Tis means that professional practice can refect modes of leading that express the sensitivity to bring multiple contributions by others together, by ‘trusting the fow of events’ will defne the right path of action.
Our third empirical chapter also draws upon music with Fay Giæver’s Using Choral Singing to Improve Employee Well-being and Social Cohesion in the Norwegian Public Sector. Sensuous Learning is embedded in social relations however, it is not merely participatory learning. It is experienced in an integrated way not least in the ‘crisis’ leading up to it. In Giæver’s account of choir singing, she illustrates the bodily
experiences choir members experienced as they learned to engage with their world of work diferently. Tey account for energy and mood changes, and an ‘integrated learning’ that enabled them to endure the transformation from negative to positive emotions. Te empirical research reported in this chapter provides a way of appreciating that improvements in professional practice have a catalytic efect in rediscovering ‘joy’ and ‘pride’, feeling ‘recognized’ all of which lead to a heightened sense of ‘cohesion’. Unlike Koivunen and Parush’s account where the invitation to making music releases the scope to see one’s approach to leading diferently, Giæver’s making music results in a ‘product’ that feels more ‘tangible’ in the way it provokes engagement above and beyond the demands of professional practice. Members of the Choir were willing to extend their working day to accommodate long hours of rehearsals, to strike a new work-life balance, and to connect with each other and what they collectively create anew.
We continue with Isabelle Sacramento, Frode Heldal, and Ricardo Carielo’s Using Body Sounds as a Coaching Tool to Promote Individual Growth in Brazil. Te power of ABMs in ‘making’ (Taylor and Ladkin 2009) is not only limited in the collective production of music, as previous chapters illustrate. Te way sound is created by the body in Sacramento et al.’s ‘body percussion’ as an arts-based method, ofers an appreciation of embodiment afresh. It transcends emotions, feelings, and moods. It zooms in to explicate how listening to sounds as a heightened sense, to include also the sounds our bodies make, reveal a lot about the way professional practices are performed. Ways of walking, breathing, speaking, listening all are spaces where sound is created and shared, expressing all the way who we are in what we do as professionals. Sacramento et al., explicate the importance of body sounds in cultivating practical judgment not only in relation to actions and reactions but in how professionals choose to perform their professional practice and in the process transform who they are. Te latter marks aspects of what may be recognized as growth not least in the refexivity it fosters. In this respect, the body percussion method of which body sounds is a part ofers a glimpse of how Sensuous Learning is embedded in the way diferent places within and around the human body provide a foundation for seeing anew who one is and what ones does.
Cecilie Meltzer’s chapter—Using Arts-Based Inquiry as a Way to Communicate Creatively in Uncovering the Future extends our understanding of how ‘ways of seeing’ and ‘ways of being’ as critical aspects of the process of learning, also foster ‘ways of becoming’ (Antonacopoulou 2018b). Based on many years of a personal practice with other artists and educators, Meltzer has developed and used with her students, artsbased inquiry. Participants engage in arts-based inquiry in which they select and then personify an image or object which allows them new insights into the questions they are inquiring into. Tis enables them to become something other than what they conceive themselves to be as professionals. In doing so, they discover ways of accessing aspects of their conscience that they did not know how else to bring to give meaning and signifcance to what they chose to do. Tis chapter ofers scope to foster art-based inquiry both as a means of supporting refexivity using paintings, images, and a range of other ‘art’ objects from which to obtain an alternative vantage point from which to conduct professional practices.
We see the value of poetry as an art-based method fostering refexivity with Irene Nikandrou’s approach of Using Epic Poems and Creative Drama to Develop Realistic Optimism Among Undergraduate Students in Greece. She extends the process of personal growth—ways of becoming—on a collective level by demonstrating how epic poems and creative drama can develop ‘realistic optimism’ in invoking Sensuous Learning when the students in her undergraduate elective course, explore their ‘internal truths’. Tis is a mode of forming practical judgements that go beyond refecting on the sounds our bodies create as Sacramento et al., suggests. It ofers a means of ‘visualizing with the senses’ one’s values and beliefs that in turn shape our ‘ways of seeing’ ourselves and the world we inhabit and transform these. Tis ‘internal dialogue’ as Nikandrou explains becomes a ‘dialogical capacity to negotiate internally agreements and disagreements, tensions, conficts and uncertainties’. Tese are all integral aspects of practical judgement both in the way it forms and the way it helps navigate professional practice by bringing the ‘whole person’ to every endeavour with their senses, feelings, thoughts, and life-long experience. Tis approach reinforces Dewey’s (1963) view of how educating needs to cultivate this
integration enabling what Nikandrou recognizes in Odysseus as—the ‘poly-tropos’—the capacity of man to change in many diferent ways who s/he is.
Kristian Firing, Kåre Inge Skarsvåg, and Tatiana Chemi’s Using “Te Staged Cocktail Party” to Improve Leaders’ Social Interaction in the Norwegian Military, presents an art-based method that explores the way creating conditions that are both playful and yet staged, can reveal how ‘mental’ and ‘emotional’ dispositions shape how we form and transform our relationships with others and navigate forming our professional identity as we ‘act as the other for the other’. Tis approach fosters different levels of refection which we see as necessary steps towards refexivity—to see above and beyond—so as to enable professionals to improve their capacity to relate with others—those that recognize their value and those that don’t. Te individual and collective growth that Sensuous Learning promotes in this is not limited in the realization of who we are but how other’s reactions to who we are may inform how we act and interact. Te Cocktail party fosters an approach for exposing this.
In Pleuntje Van Meer’s chapter; Learning from Arts: Using Abstract Painting to Discover New Understandings and Approaches Tat Are Relevant for Both Personal Development and Consulting Practice, we learn directly from the lived experience of a practitioner—professional—how painting can become an individual practice and how it can support both personal and professional development. Van Meer ofers an authentic account of her approach to using drawings in her artistic practice as an abstract painter to express her inner world and her own battle in-between ‘being and becoming’. We would call this a battle (which she recognizes as a ‘crisis’), because we would see in this the tensions also her art seeks to express when multiple ways of speaking out without words, to reveal emotions, ideas, that reveal a state of ‘unfocused or surrendering to a stream of consciousness’. We witness in this account a very personal exposition of the place—‘outside-in’, ‘inside-out’—where Sensuous Learning emerges. Tis intertwining of inner and outer selves invites others and the context in which we stand to form and reform our stance. Tis is imperative in understanding how practical judgment is shaped, not only because it refects the self and other in ongoing conversation, but also how the interaction externally between self and other feeds the
conversation within the self and the other for the other and for the self. Put diferently, this signals what the state of refexivity provides space for. It creates a 3rd dimension, an alternative way of seeing and being and that is why it fuels becoming and remaining a professional. Tis is a position that Antonacopoulou (2018b) provides further support for through empirical fndings from her action learning research with a Secretary of Education. Such becoming is both personal and relational. Our personal growth fuels the growth of others. It opens up our professional practice to serve the ends—common good—it has the potential and higher purpose to serve.
Like Van Meer, Andrew Mountfeld’s Using Arts-Based Methods to Explore Learning in an Individual with Systemizing Bias provides an authentic and personal account of the way a variety of art-based methods were combined to support personal and professional development especially in dealing with systematizing bias. Tis chapter ofers not only an account of how individual art-based methods—literature, drawing, photography, and music—can be deployed to support individual and professional development. Perhaps more powerfully, in this account is the way Mountfeld did not only examine all these forms of art others created and made art himself. He also did art with others to improve his professional practice and the impact of systematizing bias in his personal and professional endeavours. Tis example is not only testament to the power of art-based methods and their impact in addressing through the learning they foster but also learning ‘difculties’ like systematizing bias. Tis chapter shows the courage that ‘cycles of refection’ demand to see not only more and diferently (Barry and Meiseik 2010) but to see one’s self anew.
We conclude this volume by returning to our opening questions; how do we go about cultivating character and conscience, and how do people learn character and conscience? Steven S. Taylor, & Elena P. Antonacopoulou refect upon what answers come out of the empirical work presented in this volume. In the light of this work, how might we think about the use of arts-based methods to create Sensuous Learning that fosters practical judgements in professional practice that also have the potential to bring about the level of transformation in communities and organizations where professional practices are conducted? By ending
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Plate 3.
Packs of cards closely resembling the original Tarots are still to be found in some parts of Switzerland, Germany, and Alsace, where they are used by the peasantry in the districts which are not much frequented by travellers; but they are unknown to the rest of the world except as curiosities. They are, however, the sole representatives of the cards which the Crusaders or the gypsies brought into Europe, and which the latter use whenever possible to divine the future or recall the past. Some writers point to the eastern origin of these Tarots, because in them “Death” is numbered thirteen, and the idea of fatality or bad luck attached to that number is essentially Oriental; and they declare that the fact that the emblematical Atouts are numbered from low to high, just as certain Asiatic alphabets are written from left to right, may cover a similar interpretation.
A CHESS.
LMOST all writers on Cards have admitted the strong resemblance they bear to Chess; and M. Paul la Croix declares that in comparatively modern times the game of chess and games of cards showed strikingly similar features, which demonstrated their common origin,—the art of painting being resorted to to depict the one, and that of sculpture to represent the other.
A pretty history of the origin of Chess has been related. It states that the game was invented for the amusement of an Oriental potentate, and was played with living figures, who were required to move at the word of command from one square to another of a huge tiled court-yard which was surrounded by the balconies of the palace and its harem, from which all the movements of the pieces on the pavement below could be watched by the sovereign and his court. Living games of Chess have been played for amusement or “sweet charity’s sake” even in modern times; but such cumbersome pieces must have been difficult to manage, and it was only natural that the ingenious mind which contrived living chessmen should soon have superseded them with figures carved in a convenient material such as wood or ivory, and then placed the mimic armies on a miniature battle-field which could be easily commanded by two or more players.
The Eastern origin of Chess is undisputed, but when and by whom it was introduced into Europe is unknown. According to Herodius, the Lydians suffered from a long and severe famine in the reign of Atys, and in order to forget their misery, invented many games, particularly dice. Previous writers attribute the invention of games of chance to the Greeks during the siege of Troy, and Cicero mentions games in the camp; but it does not follow that these games were either chess, cards, or dice. They may have been knuckle-bones or jack-stones, as that game was known in very early days, and pictures
representing persons playing with them have been found among Egyptian antiquities.
It has been asserted positively by the oldest traditions that the cards of Indian origin are only chessmen transferred to paper on which the principal pieces of the game are reproduced, the game being improved by admitting more than two players.
In the game of Chess there are generally only two armies of pawns, each one being commanded by a King, a Vizir (which in the lapse of years has become a Queen), a Knight, an Elephant (which became a fool and after that a Bishop), and a Dromedary (afterward a Castle); and the game shows a striking similarity to the Indian games of cards, which have eight companies distinguished by their colours and emblems, and of which each one has their King, their Vizir, and their Elephant. The two games differ, of course; but sufficient resemblances between them remain to show their common origin, which recalls the terrible game of war, in which each adversary must assault, manœuvre, make combinations, and exert eternal vigilance.
We learn from a most reliable source (Abel de Rémusat, Journal asiatique, September, 1822) that playing-cards came to Europe from India and China, and that, like the game of Chess, they were known to the Arabians and the Saracens from the beginning of the twelfth century. At first these games found little popular favour, most probably because they were introduced at a period when civil and ecclesiastical authorities most positively forbade all games of chance.
From India Chess spread gradually to other countries. The Persians seem to have known it about the middle of the sixth century; and Singer, in his “History of Playing-cards,” states that it reached China at nearly the same period, and in the reign of the Emperor Wa-si.
There are such striking resemblances between the figures used in Chess and those on cards as to leave very little doubt where the inspiration for the latter originated.
Beautiful circular cards made of ivory have been found, on which the figures are painted as if the artist were unable to carve the forms that he desired to represent, and therefore was obliged to paint them on a flat surface. These cards are small disks, which might easily be placed on the squares of a board and moved from one to the other like chessmen. The advantage of commanding a concealed army instead of one spread out on an open field probably soon became apparent, and the result was that some slight changes in the shape of the pictured figure and the material used were soon made, which with various modifications have come down to us as the modern playing-card.
If a study is made of some of the different packs of Chinese cards, it will be seen that horses, deer, and other animals are represented on them, together with symbols which seem to mark the suits. In other packs, instead of the figure of the animal, Chinese characters are placed above the symbol marking the suit, which characters seem to have been put there instead of the picture, and which it is affirmed state, “This is the horse,” or “This one is the deer,” as the case may be,—as if on one of our court cards the legend “This is the Queen” should be written on its face, instead of placing there the quaintly garbed female form which usually represents that august person.
We find the principal figures from the chess-board reproduced in the Tarots, and also in some of the Spanish and German packs. There is the King, the Knight, or mounted horseman, and the Knave. The pawns or common soldiers are represented by numbers; but there is this difference between Cards and the game of Chess as it is generally played,—in the former there are four armies, or as we should call them “suits,” and each one is headed by the King instead of the two sides generally seen in Chess. Now, Mr Chatto remarks that there is an Indian game of Chess which is called Chaturanga, or “The Four Kings,” in which two allied armies play against the same opponents. He also gives a few rules for this game. “Having marked eight squares on all sides,” says the Sage, “place the red army to the east, the green to the south, the yellow to the west, and the black to the north.” It is worthy of notice that these colours form the ground of
four of the suits of one of the divisions of an eight-suit pack of Hindostanee cards; and this supports the theory that the painted ivory disks might have originally been used on the chess-board and then held in the hand. This strange Indian game of Chess would also point to the first division of the mimic warriors into four armies, each one distinguished by its uniform of different colours, which when placed in the cards became known as “suits.” This word was probably derived from the French en suite, which signifies “to follow.”
There is another game known in which two chess-boards are joined. “It is played by two persons on each side, each of whom is concerned to defend his own game at the same time that he cooperates with his ally to distress by every means in his power the two armies opposed to them.” “Four-handed Chess” is described in Hoyle’s Book of Games, which illustrates a board with one hundred and sixty squares. The game is played with four sets of chessmen, coloured, respectively, white, black, red, and green, like those of the Indian game.
The Queen, both in Chess and Cards, has a European if not an entirely French origin. She takes the place of the Eastern Vizir, or General; and it may be particularly remarked that in the game of Chess she is more of an Amazon or Joan of Arc than the consort of a reigning monarch. Her height also is excessive for a woman, in proportion to the other pieces, and her active duties of harassing the enemy and protecting her slow-moving husband while leading his army to battle show that although she is called a Queen she is usurping the position of a general, who could more appropriately fill this important, active, and warlike place than she can.
In the Card Kingdom the Queen is a much more lifelike and womanly person, as in it she aids and abets her sovereign lord and master, and is generally meekly subordinate to him.
While drawing attention to the resemblances between the games of Chess and of Cards, we must not forget to notice a slight but perhaps important fact; and that is that all the ancient packs had checkered backs, as if the little army were loath to leave the old
battle-field, but transferred it to their backs, and exposed that to the gaze of the opponent instead of standing in battle-array upon it. The oldest existing packs or Tarots retain these checkered backs; and some authors have decided that Tarot means “checkered,” and that the name is derived from this circumstance.
The author of “Playing and Other Cards in the British Museum,” Mr. W. H. Wiltshire, derides the idea that cards derive their origin from the chessmen, and points out the fact that “in all such games there are certain approximations, although hardly enough to establish an identity of origin. Chess,” he says, “is a game of calculation and combinations; cards are purely chance.” This seems hardly a fair objection, as there are many games of cards that call for calculations and combinations, some of them requiring much thought and study, although on the other hand there are many that may be played mechanically and without bestowing much thought upon them. Mr. Wiltshire also declares “that in Chess the pieces are exposed and the positions equalized, while the cards are hidden, and the cleverest person may be beaten by a novice without having made one trick.” Some particular game of cards may have been in the author’s mind when he made this statement; but there are a great many card games about which it would not be true.
ENGRAVING.
THE order obtained in 1441 by the master card-makers of Venice from their Senate which prohibited the introduction into that city of “large quantities of cards printed and painted outside of Venice,” should be particularly noticed, as printed cards are especially mentioned as well as painted ones; and this points to the fact that there was in use some process besides the original one of painting or stencilling when the cards of that period were being manufactured.
The fragments of the French packs which show by many marks but particularly by their costumes that they were executed about the time of Charles the Seventh, were possibly some of the first efforts of the wood-engraver. They were probably produced between the years 1420 and 1440,—that is, before the greater part of the xylographies now known.
The first pictures produced by printing with blocks of wood were probably used as playing-cards; and this is an invention which is very much older than that of printing with movable types.
By the middle of the fifteenth century cards had spread all over Europe, and necessity called for an economical process by which they might be rapidly as well as cheaply produced.
In 1392 three packs of Tarots were painted for the King of France by Jacquemin Gringonneur, for which he received fifty-six sols parisis,—that is to say, about one hundred and seventy francs, or thirty-four dollars.
A single pack of Tarots, which were charmingly painted about 1415 by Marziano, Secretary to the Duc de Milan, cost fifteen thousand écus d’or (about five hundred dollars); and in 1454 a pack of cards intended for a dauphin of France cost only fourteen or
fifteen francs, or three dollars. In the thirty years which had elapsed it is evident that a cheap process of manufacturing cards had been discovered.
Cards had also become merchandise, and were sold at the same time as counters, or épingles; and from the latter is derived the French expression “tirer son épingle de jeu.”
It has generally been conceded that the Chinese understood the art of wood-engraving long before it was practised in Europe. Marco Polo, who visited China about the middle of the thirteenth century, describes, in his interesting book of travels, a mode of printing or stamping with coloured ink; and it is probable that printing from a block was also known to the Chinese at that time.
Authorities do not agree about which are the first specimens of wood-engraving, but it is more than probable that a rude picture of Saint Christopher carrying the infant Jesus, which is dated 1425, is one of the earliest specimens of the art. This curious and interesting print was discovered pasted in the cover of a manuscript in the library of the Chartreuse at Buxheim in Suabia. Mr. Singer gives a description of the infancy of the xylographic art, and says that the demand for playing-cards increased so rapidly after their introduction into the European countries that it became imperative to manufacture them at a moderate price; and thus wood-engraving became of consequence, and its productions soon became a most important article of commerce.
It is probable that at first the wood-engravers produced only small pictures of saints, influenced no doubt by their priestly surroundings, as nearly all of the early wood-cuts which have been found are of pious subjects; and they were probably executed by the inhabitants of the religious houses, who were at the time the educated men of the day. These early engravings are printed on paper of the shape, size, and style of the earliest known playing-cards. The saints’ pictures always bore a small streamer or ribbon, on which the name of the holy person represented was written. On the early specimens of playing-cards names are always placed beside the heads of the
court cards; and this may have been necessary in order to distinguish the saint from the king, as it is possible that the engraver may have used the same figures to represent not only the holy personages, but also the members of the royal card family, and they could be distinguished only by the names written beside them.
An old chronicler of the city of Ulm, of about the year 1397, states that playing-cards have been sent in bundles to Italy, Sicily, and other southern countries in exchange for groceries and other merchandise; and it may have been this exportation of cards from Germany, which probably increased most rapidly, that called for the edict forbidding the importation of cards into Venice in 1441. It also points to their having been manufactured in quantities even before 1423, the date of the earliest known wood-cut.
Cards were not only produced by hand-painting, stencilling, or wood-engraving, but really artistic and beautifully executed cards were engraved on copper, in 1466, by an artist known as Le Maître (the Master), but by no other name.
Only a few specimens of these unique cards are now to be found in some museums, and the series is not complete. According to calculation, they should consist of seventy cards, containing five suits instead of four, with fourteen cards in each suit and four figures or court cards to each one. The face cards are the King, Queen, Knight, and Knave; and the marks show a bizarre collection of savages, wild beasts, birds of prey, and flowers. They are grouped and numbered and arranged in such a way as to be easily distinguished and sorted into the correct suits.
In 1463 the card-makers of England endeavoured to protect themselves from the foreign importation of cards, and they must have been a somewhat influential guild even at that early date to require and receive this protection from the Government; but no cards have been discovered that were undoubtedly of English manufacture of that period.
MATERIALS.
THE process of manufacturing Playing-cards now deserves attention. It seems that the first packs of Tarots which have been preserved were made of two pieces of cardboard, and were afterward pasted together. The backs had a checkered pattern designed on them, and were placed so as to overlap the face; and the diapered edge was carefully pasted down and formed a protection and a frame to the pictured side.
It may be as well to quote here the graphic account given by Mr. Chatto in his “Facts and Speculations on Playing-cards.” He says:—
“The following account of the manner of making cards at the manufactory of Messrs. de la Rue & Co. of London is extracted from Bradshaw’s Journal, April 16, 1842:—
“‘The first object that engages our attention is the preparation of the paper intended to be formed into cards. It is found that ordinary paper when submitted to pressure acquires a certain degree of polish, but not sufficient for playing-cards of the finest quality. In order, therefore, that it may admit of the high finish which is afterwards imparted, the paper is prepared by a white enamel colour consisting of animal size and other compounds. This substance, which renders the paper impermeable to the atmosphere, is laid on with a large brush and left to dry.
“‘The paper being ready for use, we proceed to explain the printing of the fronts of the cards, which are technically distinguished as pips and têtes.
“‘To commence with the simpler, the pip (that is, the Hearts, Diamonds, Spades, and Clubs), sets of blocks are produced, each containing forty engravings of one card; and as the ordinary method of letterpress printing is employed, forty impressions of one card are
obtained at the same moment. As the pips bear but one colour, black or red, they are worked together at the hand-press or steam-printing machine.
“‘For the têtes, however (or court cards), which with the outline contain five colours,—dark blue, light blue, black, red, and yellow,—a somewhat different contrivance is employed. The colours are printed separately, and are made to fit into each other with great nicety, in the same manner as in printing silks or paper-hangings. For this purpose a series of blocks are provided which if united would form the figure intended to be produced. By printing successively from these blocks, the different colours fall into their proper places until the whole process is completed. After the printing is done the sheets are carried into a drying-room heated to 80° Fahrenheit, and are allowed to remain there three or four days, in order to fix the colours.’”
In France the card generally consists of two pieces of paper, but in England a more substantial article is required. It is generally four sheets thick,—that is, the foreside and the back, and two inside layers of an inferior description. The pasting of these sheets together requires care and clever manipulation. After the sheets are pasted together, they are thoroughly dried, enamelled, and then cut into cards which are sorted by being laid out on a table about two hundred at a time, until all the cards that constitute a pack are spread out; so that by this operation two hundred packs are completed almost simultaneously. The best cards are called Moguls; the others, Harrys and Highlanders.
Paper was almost a necessity in card-making; and England could not have provided it when cards were first made there, as the art of paper-making was unknown before the reign of Henry the Seventh, who lived from 1485 to 1509. Even as late as the days of Queen Anne, paper was imported from Germany for the purpose.
Many other materials have been used in manufacturing cards besides paper. As has been mentioned, beautiful packs have been painted on ivory or mother of pearl. Parchment and leather have
been often used; thin tablets of wood and large leaves have been pressed into service, as well as stout paper which was neither card nor pasteboard. The Chinese and Hindoos sometimes used a cotton paper so stout and smooth as to make it most suitable for the purpose; and the curious wooden sticks carved with distinguishing figures used by the Haida Indians show perhaps the most peculiar materials used in the manufacture of games.
Mr. Chatto mentions a pack of Hindostanee cards in the Museum of the Royal Asiatic Society which are made of canvas, and are said to be a thousand years old. He says: “On first handling them they seem to be made of thin veneers of wood. These cards are circular; and the figures or marks appear to be executed by hand, not printed nor stencilled.”
The Malays use cards made of cocoanut or palm-tree leaves, which are first well dried, and the symbols or distinctive characters are then traced on the leaf with an iron style.
A story in the “History of the Conquest of Florida,” by Garcilasso de la Vega, relates that “the soldiers who were engaged in that expedition, having burnt all their cards after the battle of Manoila (about 1542), made themselves new ones of parchment, which they painted admirably as if they had followed the business all their lives; but as they either could not or would not make so many as were wanted, players had the cards in turn for a limited time.”
Such fragile and thin materials have sometimes been used in the production of cards that dealing was difficult and shuffling impossible. One very beautiful pack has been produced, and is preserved in the South Kensington Museum in London, which was embroidered on silk.
Such materials as gold, silver, and tortoise-shell, and even small tiles have been used in the manufacture of cards; but when made from these materials they have been difficult to handle, and have been regarded only as curiosities; and at the present day thick pasteboard, either highly enamelled or quite without glaze of any kind, is in general use all over the world.
NAME.
THE first positive mention of Playing-cards is in a manuscript by Nicholas de Covellezzo, which is preserved among the Archives of Viterbo. “In 1379,” says the Chronicler, “playing-cards were introduced in Viterbo. These came from the country of the Saracens, and were called Naïb.” The Italians have for centuries called their cards Naibi, and in Spain they are still named Naypes.
M. la Croix remarks that in Arabic the word Naïb signifies “captain,” and declares that this name proves the military origin of Cards, and points to their connection with Chess.
Mr. Taylor, in his work on Playing-cards, quotes from the abovementioned manuscript by Nicholas de Covellezzo, which records the introduction of cards into Italy, and says: “The use of the term Naïb in Italy for cards is one of the strongest proofs of their introduction into Europe by the gypsies. To this day they are called in Spain Naypes, which is clearly a corruption of the Arabic Nabi, ‘a prophet;’ and we have therefore the significant fact that cards have been and are still called in Spain by a title which fortune-tellers (gypsies, in fact) might easily be supposed to claim.”
Mr. Singer quotes from various authorities to show the derivation of the word Naipes, and says that “it may mean ‘flat’ or ‘even,’” which would describe a card; and also that the Hebrew word Naibes denotes “sorcery, fortune-telling, prediction,” etc.
Mr. Chatto derives the same word from one found in Hindostanee, Na-eeb or Naib, which signifies a viceroy, lieutenant, or deputy, and says: “As the game of Chess was known in Hindostan by the name of ‘The Four Kings,’ if cards were suggested by Chess and invented in the same country, the supposition that they might have been called Chatier-Nawaub, ‘The Four Viceroys,’ as the cognate game of Chess was called ‘The Four Kings,’ and that this name subsequently
became changed into Chartati-Naib, is at least as probable as the derivation of Naipes from N. P., the initials of Nicolas Pepin, their supposed inventor;” which derivation is gravely given by another author.
It is only in Italy that the old name of Naipes or Naibi is retained. In Portugal the word has become corrupted into Naipe; in Spain, Naypes or Naipes. In France cards are called Cartes à jouer; and a pack is named a Jeu. In Germany they are termed Briefe and Karten and Spielkarten. In Holland the name is Kaarten or Speelkaarten; in Denmark, Kort or Spelkort; and in Russia, Kartu. The term Alea, which was frequently employed in ancient ordinances and laws, seems to cover all games of chance, and is not used to signify playing-cards alone. The derivation of the English word card from the French carte is too plain to require further comment.
THE CLASSIFICATION OF PACKS OF CARDS INTO SUITS.
EVER since the fifteenth century evidences of the existence and popularity of cards have been found in Italy, Spain, Germany, and France.
The names, colours, emblems, number, and form change with the countries or caprices of the card-makers; but what are termed Cartes Tarots or Cartes Françaises are always the original cards which came from the East, and which are in a greater or less degree faithful imitations of the still more ancient game of Chess.
It is related that on the 5th of March, 1423, Saint Bernardin, of Sienna, addressed a crowd which had assembled before a church in that place, and inveighed with such energy and eloquence against all games of chance that his hearers rushed to search for their dice, their chess, and their cards, and lighting a large bonfire, immolated them on the spot.
One man stood by who watched mournfully the movements of the frantic crowd, and then bursting into tears cried out to the preacher: “Father,” quoth he, “I make cards. I have no other work by which I can make a livelihood; by stopping my profession, you condemn me to starve.”
“If painting is the only thing you can do for a living,” replied the preacher, “take this picture [showing him the sacred monogram surrounded by brilliant rays] and copy it.”
The workman followed this advice, and became wealthy by reproducing it.
This tale shows how well established the use of cards was in the fifteenth century; and specimens of the cards of that period are still in
existence, and at once strike the observing student with the fact that the four great divisions or suits exist (although with different symbols) in almost all the known packs.
It is probable that in France the Tarots were used for many years exactly as they were when first introduced into that country, until the rearrangement of the pack by the French courtiers for the convenience of their demented sovereign. When this ingenious condensation of the original pack took place, the symbols of the Orient were discarded, and the adapter chose two colours to represent the different suits, and placed les Cœurs (Hearts), les Carreaux (Diamonds), les Piques (Spades), les Trifles (Clubs), as the symbols that marked them instead of those on the Tarots, which were Denari (Money), Spade (Swords), Coppe (Cups), and Bastoni (Maces). These devices were not distinguished by particular colours; and it is only when the French cards have been copied and adapted that we find the distinctive colours red and black marking the divisions of the suits.
Playing-cards without doubt reached Germany through Italy, but during their journey toward the north they lost their Eastern character and their Saracenic name almost at once. They never seem to have been called Naïb, or by any name resembling that word. The first mention of cards in Germany calls them Briefe; that is to say, letters. The first card-makers were named Brief-maler.
The Germans composed symbols to mark the suits for themselves, and rejected the Eastern ones, and were probably unconscious that such devices as Hearts, Diamonds, etc., existed on the cards of the neighbouring country; for intercourse in those days was not rapid, and each kingdom was as independent of its fellow as if oceans divided them. M. la Croix says that the Germans “with their love of symbolism discovered a vegetable as well as a military signification in the original game of cards.” While making important changes, they retained a little of their warlike character in their symbols and figures, and placed among them some designs inspired by the vegetable world. The devices with them signified the triumphs and the honours of war, and they discarded the weapons of the East,
the Swords and the Staves, and disdained the sordid money and the priestly chalice, and adopted sprays of oak and of ivy as if intended for victors’ wreaths, and chose tiny bells, or grelots, as distinctive marks, as these were among the most important signs of German nobility, and borne by them among the other heraldic marks, and considered most honourable emblems. These symbols gave a more peaceful aspect to the ancient warlike game.
The names of the German suits are Schellen (Bells), Hertzen (Hearts), Grün (Green), and Eicheln (Acorns). It is not now known at what period these symbols which have become a distinguishing character of the German cards were adopted, but during part of the fifteenth century other objects were also represented on their cards; and the different marks quarrelled with the others and strove to be generally adopted, but without success, as those named above have been the only ones in use for many generations, although they are now being gradually superseded by the French designs, which among English-speaking nations are known as Hearts, Diamonds, Clubs, and Spades.
Some ancient German packs which have been preserved are not only very remarkable for the beautiful workmanship lavished on their production and as handsome specimens of the engraver’s art, but are also curious because they contain five suits instead of the ordinary four. These were divided into Hares, Parrots, Pinks, Roses, and Columbines, with the usual King, Queen, Knight, and Knave in each suit. These cards were executed in the fifteenth century in the city of Cologne. Other packs of engraved cards made about the latter end of the fifteenth century in Germany had their suits marked by animals, flowers, and birds, and were not coloured, the symbols marking the suits without other aid. The mark of the Grün, or Leaf, in the German card resembles in shape the Hearts and Spades of the French. The shape of all these pips is closely analogous; and the Heart provided with a short handle and called a Spade or given a long stem and named a Leaf must originally have had a common origin, all knowledge of which is lost in the mists of the Middle Ages.
The Pique may have received its name of Spade in its English home, not, as some authors fancy, because the word was a corruption of the Spanish Espadas, but because it resembled in shape the spade or shovel which was in use in England when cards first made their appearance there. M. la Croix fancies the shape of the Heart resembles a shield, and points to this as supporting his claim that the designs on the cards had a military origin. Among the miners in some parts of England Diamonds are frequently called Picks, owing to their resemblance to the head of that tool. M. la Croix also declares that les Cœurs were the symbols placed on the cards by the French adapter, in order to do honour to his friend Jacques Cœur, a merchant of the day whose trade with the East might have been the means of introducing the cards into France, and fancies that les Trifles denoted “the heraldic plant of Agnes Sorel,”—the King’s mistress, who had adopted the humble clover-leaf as her badge as a sort of pun upon her own name; the French word sorel signifying the plant the leaves of which bear some resemblance to the Trifle on the cards.
The Grelots on the German cards may have been copied from the “Hawk-bell,”—a favourite mark of nobility, and one which it was considered an honour to be able to display among the symbols on the coat of arms. Bells were also an insignia of rank in India; and some writers have pointed out that the Germans might have copied the devices on their cards from Hindoo packs, as well as from the better known Tarots or Saracen cards. Bells have always been favourite decorations; and their use dates back to the hangings of the Temple, where the fringes which adorned the curtains and the garments of the high-priest were ornamented with bells.
In a beautiful pack of Hindoo cards mentioned by Mr. Singer seven suits were found, consisting of Suns represented by golden disks, Moons or silver circles, Crowns, Cushions, Harps, Letters, and Swords. These cards closely resemble the Tarots, and may have originated in a common source. In some of the Hindoo packs the suits are distinguished by a colour as well as by the form of the symbol.
Although parts of packs which from the devices they bear may have been imported from Germany or Spain, and which seem to have been well used, are preserved in the British Museum, having been found in England, only cards of French origin have been universally used there, and they have held undisputed sway from the middle of the fifteenth century, when the distinctive colours of red and black, and the emblems of Hearts, Diamonds, Spades, and Clubs were generally adopted, and have remained nearly unchanged from that time to the present. There was no attempt to shade the pips or the figures and faces of the court cards at any time in England, and the outlines were simply coloured and laid on in solid blocks. The French have changed their figures, and shaded their faces, and made their pips slightly more symmetrical in shape; but they are very nearly the same as when originally designed by the clever-fingered French courtier.
