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.
Postcard
Gwalior, Sas Bhao Temple
An early undivided back postcard by The Phototype Company in Bombay, probably from its first pan-India series characterized by very high printing quality and red titles.
Jemadar Mir Dast, V.C., I.O.M.
[Original caption] Jemadar Mir Dast 5th Wilde's Rifles. Won the V.C. for great bravery in the fighting around Ypres. Issued by Order of Her Highness Nandkunverba, C.I. Maharani of Bhavnagar, for the benefit of the War Fund. [end]
From a series of
Ram and Tulsidas Meeting
This postcard is actually an exquisite work of art, signed by the Nathdwara artist A. Ghasiram. Nathdwara in Rajasthan was a center of "Pichwai" painting for centuries.
General View Shah Masjid and Ranjit Singh Samad, Lahore (India)
The dominant presence in the city when the British took control of Lahore 1848 was not the Mughals, but the Sikhs.
Bombay - Smoking Room, The Taj Mahal Hotel
The Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in Bombay, which opened in 1903, was very popular with visitors and on postcards.
A Persian Gypsy Woman and Her Children
[Original caption] A Persian Gypsy Woman and Children. These itinerant vendors of small articles travel far and wide through India, often pretending also to occult knowledge.
Greetings from Darjeeling
One can only marvel at the early "Greetings from" postcard, the way five photographs are woven into one image with the help of plant motifs, in this case tree branches but often palm trees for Indian images.
Punjab Rose
An impressive studio shot that lays bare the artifice used to make these images work: the painted backdrop with visible border, the matching design shoes and carpet, the desk or piano the woman's arm is resting on, surrounded by an oval frame common
Singhalese ayah (Nurse Maid)
Plate & Co. in Colombo dominated the postcard trade on the island of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), and sold half a million postcards in 1907 alone, an enormous sum for a single publisher.
