Although a coolie – "a hired labourer, or burden-carrier"(Hobson-Jobson, p. 249) – were at the bottom of the social ladder, and the word is said to originally come from Kolis, a hill-people in the Western Ghats, "whose savagery, filth and general…
A very finely hand-tinted postcard, with the indigo closely fitting the cloth, one arm balancing a basket of fruit on the seller's head, the other reaching out to the viewer with a bright red sample.
An early shipping line advertising card from Germany, from one of the largest late 19th century shipping firms that only in 1970 was merged into Hamburg America Line to form Hapag-Lloyds.
An artfully placed stamp gives this card additional character. According to "the language of stamps" then in vogue, a red stamp placed at this ange would mean "I am true to you." In this case, it is likely that a design sense inspired the sender who…
A popular Jaipur postcard shows a woman spinning cotton in front of a traditional door. The colors were applied by hand and with a stencil to a black and white printed postcard, fairly accurately, although drops coming off the wheel on left are…
An unusual coloured collotype by Kashmir's premiere postcard publisher. The pink seems to billow both outward from the frame and upward to the woman's face.
An early postcard by R. Jalbhoy, a Karachi photographer who established his practice around 1890 and later would become a reputable dealer for Kodak and various European photographic goods on Elphinstone Street.
One of the more beautiful hand-tinted real photographic postcards. Identified only as a South Indian woman, it seems to have been printed in a French colony (Vietnam?) by a Chinese photographer.
