[Calcutta Harbour on the Hooghly]
An early and rare early photo postcard, made with a photograph pasted on card stock.
An early and rare early photo postcard, made with a photograph pasted on card stock.
The bicycle was something quite new in Bombay at the turn of the century, and often featured on postcards, frequently with women as drivers.
Motor travel made accessing hill stations much easier; note the the 1920s eras car and smaller buses in this image on the road from Rawalpindi to Murree (the transportation company advertised on the sign is the "Simla Motor Service"). The trip into
Postcards of camels transporting goods were common from the Northwest Frontier Province [now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa], as in this postcard by Holmes, and Sindh, this one probably an amateur real photo postcard from 1929.
Although the word "dandy" originally referred to boatmen on the Ganges (Hobson-Jobson, 1906, p.
For a beautiful postcard like this, we might reach for an excerpt by Nirad Chaudhri (1897-1999). Even if written about a different railway station, in East Bengal, it shows how impactful trains were to those in India at the turn of the century.
A very early postcard most likely drawn by lithographer Paul Gerhardt and printed at The Ravi Varma Press, although this is not certain and is based on its similarity to other signed Gerhardt postcards in its use of leaves and trees and background.
A zenana carriage offered veiled transport for women through the city. These single cards are similar to Chinese handmade postcards and are often court-sized with undivided backs, and not often mailed abroad.
A version of this card is postmarked
From today's perspective, an unusual subject given the lack of beauty, architectural significance or human type that grace most early postcards.
Dharmatala (Dharumtalla) Road, now Lenin Sarani in central Kolkata, is one of the busiest thoroughfares in Kolkata. Its original name means "holy street."