Cotton Cart
Cotton was the product that helped put 19th century Mumbai on the road to becoming one of the world's major cities. The product was celebrated on postcards like this virtual painting.
Cotton was the product that helped put 19th century Mumbai on the road to becoming one of the world's major cities. The product was celebrated on postcards like this virtual painting.
An Dhurandhar portrait of a familiar sight on Bombay streets, the multi-tasking juggler. Note once again the soft city backdrop.
Bullocks and bhistees served an important role in transporting fresh water to city residents.
Ensuring fresh water supply to the residents in a desert region was always difficult.
The Delhi Durbar of 1911 was one of the most "postcarded" events of the Raj, and the first time a reigning British monarch, George V and his wife Queen Mary (an avid postcard collector) attended.
From an early "Greetings from" series by D.M. Macropolo & Co., a renowned Raj tobacconist with retail stores in Kolkata and Mumbai.
[Verso] "Camel Caravan W Karachi India Nov 1929"
One of America's most recognized international brands around the turn of the century, this was one of 33 postcards advertising the tobacco firm's product.
Bullocks that ferried water were called "water bullocks." This colored image by Clifton & Company, one of the earliest mass publishers of postcards in Mumbai (Bombay) was fairly popular, perhaps because of its rich colors.
In Ali Raza's excellent book Revolutionary Pasts Communist Internationalism in Colonial India (Tulika Books, 2022) there is this note from a police report in 1926: "A public meeting was held . . . under the auspices of the Nau Jawan Bharat Sabha to
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