Ceylon
A Singer Manufacturing Co. advertising card made in connection with the World Columbia Exhibition in 1893.
[Verso, Original caption] “There is a picturesque island in the Indian Ocean, separated from Peninsular India by the Gulf of Manaar.
Undivided back
Postman, Mysore, British India
A small advertising card for Chocolat Antoine, a chocolate firm in Brussels, Belgium, celebrating the far reach of the postal services – the uniformed deliverer, stamp and village woman watching in muted awe.
[Dancer]
![[Dancer]](https://www.paperjewels.org/sites/default/files/styles/square_thumbnail/public/slides/nautch-woman-g-and-o-court-sized.jpg?itok=ZqgDCVag "[Dancer]")
An even smaller than usual court-sized postcard, with a blind-stamped instead of printed "Post Card" on the back, suggesting it is among the earliest postcards published by the firm, and therefore one of the first of a dancer.
Gruss aus Carl Hagenbeck's Indien 1898
An early Exposition postcard by a German exotic people's promoter. The handwritten message, dated Dec.
Mr. D. E. Wacha
President, 17th Congress, Calcutta 1901
Celebrating one of the many Parsee businessmen who supported the Independence struggle and founded the Indian National Congress Party.
The Bhistie
A contemporary artist's rendering of one of the most popular postcard subjects, the all important "bhistie" who brought water in an animal skin to the thirsty.
The Bazaar, Leh
Probably one of the earliest if not the earliest postcard of Leh, capital of the former Kingdom of Ladakh. Little is known about R. E. Shorter, a photographer with offices in Sialkot, Punjab, on the route to Kashmir, and Kashmir.
Rabindranath Tagore
A portrait of Tagore published three years after his death. In Krishna Dutta and Andrew Robinson's excellent biography of this great man (Bloomsbury, 1995), there appears this translation of this poignant poem:
Karma (The Worker), 1896
No sign of my
The Great Hero of India
Few if any politicians were as popular as Bal Gangadhar Tilak, the Maharashtrian politician and freedom fighter who spent many years in jail. He was referred to by British authorities as "the father of Indian unrest."
Tea Garden, Gauhati, Assam
There are very few early postcards – besides a handful of missionary ones – of Assam, an area in northeastern India brought under British control in the first half of the 19th century following wars with the then Kingdom of Burma.
