Bombay Mumbai

Taraporevala & Sons was the premiere Bombay bookstore and publisher, stock full of 19th century illustrated magazines and images eagerly bought and saved in trunks by artists like Ravi Varma as inspiration.

Also known as Lokmanya ("accepted by the people as their leader") Tilak, this Maharashtran was one of the first leaders of the Independence Movement, and someone who used the plague and other injustices of British rule to rally people around the cry…

P.K. Raja Sandow (1894/5-1943) was one of the most famous silent film actors of India, and later a producer and director as well. Born in Tamil Nadu, he was given the name "Sandow" after a well-known German body-builder of the time.

This is actually a real photograph postcard of a water colour on paper by M.V. Dhurandhar, part of a series by the artist on the people of Bombay.

A rare lithograph from 1907 or beyond. Note the British policeman in side profile, the local constable saluting him. They are nearly the same height. The background reveals itself to be a cutout of the city, the policeman's terrain.

A curious case of an Italian word finding itself stamped upon a postcard of a characteristic type in India (the fakir, in this case a mendacious one). Mountebank is an old word for a charlatan, or salesman of quack medicines.

A interesting very early lithographic card from Bombay by the little-known city artist/publisher W. Cooper, who seems to have specialized in the risque postcard (the same woman seems to be the model for A Trysting Place).

An early court-sized card made from an albumen photograph with the studio inscribed in the glass negative at the bottom.

Bourne & Shepherd are said to have begun their photographic activities in 1840, a year after the invention of photography (see Macmillan, Seaports of India and Ceylon, 1928, p. 144, probably due to activities of Charles Shepherd).

A magnificent early lithographic postcard of Bombay, show Marine Drive before the Art Deco buildings became a dominant feature in the 1930s.