Sampling and Weighing Cotton
Mumbai grew from the 1860s through the 1890s largely because of the international cotton trade, which went from exporting cotton to textile manufacturing mills dotting the city.
Labor
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.
Fisher Woman
An early postcard and theme of Bombay artists, the fisher woman, with a basket of fish on her head. A fishing vessel is in the background, its mast at an angle which adds energy to her pose.
Cotton Cart
A well-reserved "Lichtdruck" in German or "light-print" which offers the touch of a painted work for one anna.
Cotton Cart
"Thousands of these carts, all over Bombay. 14/4/06"
Washing Day Dhobi Washer Woman
A humorous colonial postcard comparing clothes washing in England and India, part of a larger artist-signed series by the large Kolkata retailer.
Shipping Tea, Colombo
"People like me who came to England in the 1950s have been there for centuries," writes the Jamaican cultural theorist Stuart Hall, "symbolically we have been there for centuries. I was coming home.
Table Boy
From an unusual lithographic series, a marvelous rendition of a type still very active throughout the subcontinent and restaurants abroad.
Indian Workers in Silver and Gold
[Original caption] Indian Workers in Silver and Gold. Unaided by mechanical invention, the handwork of these craftsmen is as near perfection as is possible.
A Mohmand Grass Cutter
Mela Ram was a photographer who might have warmly welcomed the advent of the real-photograph as a way for his art to take precedence over the vagaries of publishing in collotype or halftone using hand-tinted color to enhance images (there are few
