Thomas De La Rue & Co. Ltd.
Founded: 1821
Location: London
Decks
Insert Image: The historical logo or crest of Thomas De La Rue & Co. Ltd. Caption: The corporate insignia of De La Rue, a firm that transitioned from straw hat manufacturing to becoming one of the world’s premier security printers.
Introduction
Thomas De La Rue & Co. Ltd. was a pivotal force in the industrialization of playing card manufacturing during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Based in London, the firm is credited with revolutionizing the industry by moving away from traditional hand-stenciling methods to high-volume, precision printing. While the company ceased playing card production to focus on security printing—creating banknotes and passports for nations globally—it remains in operation today as De La Rue plc.
History and Innovation
The company was established by Thomas De La Rue (1793–1866), a native of Guernsey in the Channel Islands. De La Rue’s career began in journalism; he published a newspaper in Guernsey in his early twenties before relocating to London in 1818. By 1821, he had established a business manufacturing straw hats, marking the official founding date of the enterprise (Houseman 1968; De La Rue plc 2025).
The Technological Shift
De La Rue soon returned to his roots in printing, bringing an inventor’s mindset to the trade. In 1831, he secured a royal patent for a novel method of “printing in colors” [1] .
For the historian of playing cards, this moment represents a significant technological bridge. Prior to De La Rue, most cards were produced using woodblocks and hand-colored stencils, resulting in variable line thickness and inconsistent coloring. De La Rue applied his new typographic (relief printing) and lithographic processes to card-making. This allowed for the mass production of cards with perfectly uniform backs—essential for preventing cheating—and pioneered the “enamelled” (highly glazed) card surface that is standard today.
By 1832, King William IV granted De La Rue Royal Letters Patent, effectively appointing the firm as the official supplier of playing cards to the Crown. As the century progressed, the company diversified, securing government contracts to print postage stamps, railway tickets, and banknotes, laying the groundwork for their modern status as a security printing giant [2] .
Production Overview
The company produced a vast array of playing cards, primarily focusing on the standard 52-card Anglo-American deck. However, they also catered to European games, producing 32-card Piquet decks, which exclude the cards from 2 through 6 to suit the mechanics of the game Piquet, popular in France and England at the time (O’Donoghue 1901, 156–157).
The “Suffragette” Deck (1910)
A notable example of De La Rue’s willingness to engage with contemporary social issues is the “Suffragette” deck held by the Etteilla Foundation. Produced circa 1910, this deck was designed to support the movement campaigning for women’s right to vote in the United Kingdom. It serves as a prime example of the playing card as a political artifact; manufacturers like De La Rue frequently produced commemorative and topical decks to capture the public zeitgeist [3] .
Historical Correction: The Etteilla III Tarot
It is necessary to address a persistent attribution error found in some cartomancy literature. Stuart Kaplan’s Encyclopedia of Tarot mentions a 78-card “Etteilla III” Tarot deck allegedly produced by De La Rue.
Historians have since clarified that this deck was not a product of Thomas De La Rue of London. Instead, it was printed by a distinct “De La Rue” family of printers based in Paris (specifically rue de la Harpe and later rue de la Verrerie). The Parisian De La Rues were unrelated to the London firm and possessed a genealogy of printing in the French capital dating back to the early seventeenth century (Kaplan 1986, 406–409; Benham 1931, 68).
[Editor’s note: Researchers should be careful not to conflate the English industrialist Thomas De La Rue with the French printers of the same surname active during the occult revival of the 18th and 19th centuries.]