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.
Labor
A Cobbler
Itinerant workers, cobblers can repair all sorts of things. Note the sophisticated lithographic printing of this image, which some early Clifton & Co.
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.
Dandy
Although the word "dandy" originally referred to boatmen on the Ganges (Hobson-Jobson, 1906, p.
Coolies
Although posed in the photographer's studio, it shows how young girls carried suitcases and bedding on behalf of visitors to the hillstation.
Gold Quartz Crushing Mills, Kolar Gold Fields
Part of a unique series of court-sized postcards showing the Kolar Gold Fields, India's largest until it was closed in 2001. That series includes Hajee Ismail Saits New Sawmill, Kolar Gold Fields and Extracting Gold, Cyanide Works, Kolar Fields.
A Knife Grinder
Knife grinders are a vanishing craft. Doing this at home before electric knife sharpeners was difficult. Knife grinders would take their sharpening wheels from door to door and take care of the problem.
An earlier postcard view, before divided backs
Knife Grinder
One can see the rapid transformation of the postcard from a time when messages where only allowed on the front, as in this card.
A Baluchi Ploughman
A postcard evocative of the hard toil required to plow fields given the upturned rocky soil. Note the large dog crouching on the right behind the farmer.
Armee Indio-Anglaise - Cordonnier Indien [Indian Shoemaker]
![Armee Indio-Anglaise - Cordonnier Indien [Indian Shoemaker]](https://www.paperjewels.org/sites/default/files/styles/square_thumbnail/public/slides/armee-indio-anglaise-cordonnier-indien.jpg?itok=Ghc3gIlV "Armee Indio-Anglaise - Cordonnier Indien [Indian Shoemaker]")
A striking portrait of an Indian shoemaker in France during World War I, who would have accompanied the 130,000 or so Indian troops who fought on the Western front during the first two years of the war.
