Naipes Heraclio Fournier

Naipes Heraclio Fournier S.A. is a well known Spanish playing card manufacturer based in Vitoria and which has its factory in Villareal de Álava (Spain). This company is property of the United States Playing Card Company, which takes part in the Jarden Corp based in Rye, New York.

History

In 1785 Francisco Fournier went to live to Burgos due to the revolution which was happenig in France. He was French, and all his family worked as printers. When he went to live to Burgos, he married a Spanish rich woman called Maria de Reoyo. They had a children called Lazaro Fournier. Lazaro married another Spanish woman called Paula González. They had four children. The youngest was born on 2 March 1849 and he was called Heraclio Fournier.

The young Heraclio Fournier started working in the factory of his brother Braulio Fournier. The factory was called "Fournier hermanos". They created a new type of playing card, which became famous in a short period of time. Due to the success that they had had, they decided to separate themselves and they started working alone.

After that Heraclio decided to go to live to Vitoria-Gasteiz. In 1868 he created a little lithography factory, it was called "Naipes Heraclio Fournier". This factory was created with the aim of being a playing card manufacturer. Later Heraclio started to make different types of stamps and to print books. As he had had with his previous work, he had a great success in Vitoria too.

In 1875 Heraclio created new printing ways and new graphic models. Two years later he worked with a Spanish art teacher called Emilio Soubrier and a painter called Diaz de Olano to design a new playing card. That was going to be the first card of the famous Spanish playing cards. In 1880 he changed his work place to a bigger one in Fueros street.

Next years he travelled a lot of times to France to improve his manufacture. In 1889 he won a prize in the exposition universelle of Paris. One year later he decided to change his actual playing cards to a new deck of cards which had 12 different colours. After the changes he won a lot of prizes in Paris, Madrid, Barcelona etc.

In 1916 Heraclio Fournier died in Vichy. He had no children and because of that his grandson Félix Alfaro Fournier became the owner of the company. Félix started a playing card collection. In 1970, after buying the cards of Thomas De la Rue, he opened a museum called "Museo Fournier de Naipes".

In 1948 Naipes Heraclio Fournier company was the best playing card manufacturer in Spain. In 1986 the company United States Playing Card company bought Naipes Heraclio Fournier, becoming it one of the best playing card companies in the world.

Nowadays the company sells 16 million cards a year. It sells them to many casinos around the world, being one of the most important playing card manufacturers in the world.

Products

The company produces many different types of cards.

• Baraja (playing cards): The most famous cards of Fournier. The company sells around 10 million cards a year.
• Poker and Bridge playing cards: The most used playing cards in casinos. The company sells around 6 million cards a year.
• Collection cards:
  • Fantasy cards.
  • Infantile playing cards.
  • Advertising playing cards.
  • Country playing cards.
  • Sports playing cards.
• Tarot playing cards.

External links

• Homepage (Spanish) / (English)
• es:Naipes Heraclio Fournier