Wednesday’s ad is for another Italian brewery, Birra Dicitura. It seems like it has to be later than the 1920s, because the art is less well-defined, more abstract. It almost seems unfinished, a rough sketch. And I can’t help but wonder; why the five of hearts? Dicitura, by the way, is Italian for “wording.”
Jay – real decks of cards have numbers in opposite diagonal corners; could be artist error of omission. Guess we have to Google for possible significance – I’m a lifelong card player & never have played any game where the 5 of hearts meant anything.
A possible explanation – from Italian Wikipedia via Google (excerpted): The deck of cards regional German seeds used in the province of Bolzano is said Salzburg (Salzburger), composed a time from 36 and now more frequently from 40 cards to whole figures. The particular that most distinguishes (besides the seeds) from other Italian regional bouquets are the values. In the order are the ACE, numeral cards of 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 and the figures are the under (the Maid or Valet Bottom) the Ober (the Maid or Valet higher) and König (King).
Note that the 5 is 2nd-highest – making the beer #1
You mentioned the “Ober” which also is in a card in the Bavarian card game called Schafkopf (or Sheepshead). Those decks had 32 cards (decks sometimes had 36 presumably for another game) from the face cards down to the 7 (and 6 when there were 36). But no 5. We learned the game from Bavarian breweries during a press junket to many of them a few years ago. Everybody had a slight variation to the game and loved teaching their local game to us. The face cards had their own names, such as the “Oberman” and “Underman.” Most of the breweries sold a deck with their logo on the back. I came home with about a dozen different decks, many of which had different card faces, too.