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
Native Barber
Among the first postcards printed in India, from a lithograph by The Ravi Varma Press' chief lithographer, Paul Gerhardt.
Office Peon
The word "peon" owes its origin to the Spanish word which means laborer.
Darjeeling. Dandy and Bearers.
Darjeeling owes its name to a blend of the Tibetan words namely "Dorje" (thunderbolt) and "ling" (place), that translates to "The land of the thunderbolt."
[Original caption] Dandy and Bearers, Darjeeling.
A Table Servant
Note the liquor bottle, likely whisky and soda on the tray in the khitmatgar's hands.
Plucking Tea, Dambatenne Estate, Ceylon
Dambatenne Estate, established in 1890, is still part of the Lipton's team empire. Perhaps most noteworthy about this advertising postcard is the way the woman's orange clothing is both distinct from and engulfed by the tea leaves.
Rice Grinding [handwritten]
![Rice Grinding [handwritten]](https://www.paperjewels.org/sites/default/files/styles/square_thumbnail/public/slides/rice-grinding_0.jpg?itok=R7-LwAWK "Rice Grinding [handwritten]")
A rare individually hand-painted postcard of a woman with a traditional stone rice grinder, often used to grind rice batter to make South Indian idlis or dosas.
A Water Carrier, Central Provinces India.
[Original caption] Woman Water Carrier. It is no unusual sight in India to see women performing manual labour, and in some cases they perform harder tasks than the men.
Coolie with his Basket
A postcard by the great Indian painter M.V. Dhurandhar illustrating an Englishwoman looking over a coolie offering his services with an empty basket. Note the cleverly positioned Indian woman with a basket on her head in the background.
The message
A Cobbler
An early postcard that blends photography, the collotype printing process and colorization to produce what the Germans called a "Lichtdruck" or "light print" that resembles a painting.
