Paper Jewels News

Oct 2, 2022
A colorful tour of the city 1892-1918 through the first postcard artists, publishers and sights that helped make this one of the world's best known cities. From M.V. Dhurandhar to The Ravi Varma Press, from Clifton to Raphael Tuck & Co., learn about the Instagram of its time with special attention to maritime views in a virtual talk by Omar Khan.
Jun 7, 2020
The evocative slideshow Painted Postcards explores the experiments of artists with the 4 x 6" form of the postcard in expressing slices of their worlds through images and words. A four-minute narration by Omar Khan accompanies a close look at hand-painted postcards and messages by the artists Abanindranath Tagore, Nandalal Bose and Ganesh Pyne on Episode 7 of DAG Museum Stories.
Feb 9, 2020
Once Upon a Postcard by Omar Khan was published in the Dhau Annual for non-European History 2019 Bildpostkarten als historische Quellen der aussereuropaischen Geschichte [Postcards as Historical Sources of Non-European History], Edited by Tilman Frasch, Rohrig Universitaets Verlag, Germany, 2019, pp. 81-96. He gave a talk based on the article on the panel Postcards: Unique and Overlooked Sources of Historical Material and Insights at the University of Wisconsin, Madison's Annual Conference on South Asia together with Drs. Catharine Asher (Chair), Sandria B. Freitag, Aditi Chandra, Allan Life on October 19th, 2019.
Nov 21, 2019
The exhibition Paper Jewels Early Postcards of Pakistan opened at the Salam Hall of Government College University (GCU) in Lahore on November 17, 2019. The first postcard exhibition in the country, it is part of the Faiz Mela (Festival) 2019. It includes over 200 postcards, reproductions and originals, covering all areas of the country as well as specific subjects like Advertising Cards, Village Life, Eid Cards, Bridges and Tunnels, World Wars, Violence in the Frontier, and much more. There are numerous postcards of old Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar, and Quetta as well as some of the earliest postcards of Government College. Extensive text supports the visitor.
Nov 8, 2019
On November 6th, 2019 Omar Khan was interviewed as part of BBC's Outlook programme. Here is what the BBC wrote. The interview starts about 27 minutes in and runs for 11 minutes. Outlook wrote: "Over the past thirty years, Omar Khan has collected around 15,000 vintage postcards, mainly featuring photos from South Asia."
Aug 29, 2019
The fall looks like it will be very busy with Paper Jewels-related talks in three continents. On Sept. 10, Omar Khan will speak at the University of California, Berkeley Institute of South Asia Studies with a slide show on Postcards of the Raj.
Apr 3, 2019
Tom Jackson, author and host of the popular British podcast series Postcard from the Past, hosts Dr. Stephen Hughes (Senior Lecturer in Anthropology, SOAS, London) and collector of Indian postcards, and Omar Khan, for a wide-ranging discussion of history, postcards, favorite postcards from each and more.
Jan 1, 2019
A photo-essay by Omar Khan on Nomad Postcards was published as part of the the Papercuts Nomad (Volume 20) issue. "Occasionally, nomads — those most fleeting of human subjects and least sedentary inhabitants of our planet — were caught on a postcard.
Dec 29, 2018
As part of the larger Ephemeral New Futures for Passing Images exhibition curated by Rahaab Allana at the Serendipity Arts Festival a portion of the Paper Jewels exhibition titled The Instagram of Their Age that was shown in Mumbai and Delhi made it to Panjim, Goa between December 2018 and January 2019.
Oct 4, 2018
The Delhi exhibition based on Paper Jewels opened at Art Heritage on October 17th and ran through November 17th, 2018. It charted the aesthetics and circulation of postcards from the 1890s to 1947, spread over major metropolitan cities across the subcontinent foregrounding the associated themes of urbanism, popular culture, industrialisation, tourism and conflict, concluding with samples from the freedom movement. It includes a number of images not see in the earlier Mumbai Paper Jewels exhibition.
Sep 24, 2018
Frank Roche's podcast Postcardist recently interviewed Omar Khan for its Sept. 17, 1994 episode.
Sep 8, 2018
The Paper Jewels Exhibition opened at the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Mumbai City Museum in Mumbai on August 19th, 2018 and will run until October 1st. (It opens at Delhi's Art Heritage Gallery October 18th, and then goes to the Serendipity Arts Festival in Goa in December.) A 22 Slide tour shows all four rooms of the exhibition layout and presentation within the museum and describes the focus and themes of each.
Aug 27, 2018
The Paper Jewels Exhibition Preview and book launch was held at the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Mumbai City Museum in Mumbai on August 18th, 2018. The opening evening included a presentation of the first book to Mr. Deepak Parekh, Chairman HDFC. This was followed by an illustrated talk on early postcards of Bombay by author Omar Khan, and a discussion of the Paper Jewels exhibition with Museum Director Tasneem Mehta and Rahaab Allana, Co-Curator from the Alkazi Collection of Photography, as well as a number of questions from the audience.
Subscribe to Front page feed