Collotype

"The High Court's imposing, labyrinthine Indo-Sarcenic buildings, with long corridors, high ceilings, much ornamental tiling, carving and iron-work, beautiful stained glass arches and portrait gallery, is one of the City's landmarks," wrote the late…

A beautiful embossed and hand-tinted card showing the entrance to Harminder Sahib, the holiest of Sikh sites in Amritsar. All the subdued colors on the entrance way were added by hand through stencils, individually on each postcard.

On the back [verso] of this card is written: "The building in the centre is the last one of which my father was the architect.

A well-reserved "Lichtdruck" in German or "light-print" which offers the touch of a painted work for one anna.

"Thousands of these carts, all over Bombay. 14/4/06"

A beautiful studio portrait featuring the "thammattama," drums used in Buddhist rituals in Sri Lanka. They may be derived from a frame drum used in Tamil Nadu, and their sound is said to have irritated British colonists.

One of those postcards that reminds us how extensive trade was at the turn of the century between India and continental Europe, in as much as the Germans published a postcard showing just the area in Hamburg harbour where ships for India were…

An unusual portrait of a dancing girl, simply dressed, with her hands above her head, against a flattened studio backdrop, probably in Mumbai.

A nicely composed postcard showing the progression in the size of ocean-going vessels, from the small boat in the foreground, to the larger ship on right, and even larger ship in the distance on the left.

The role of nautch or "dancing" girl was changing at the time of this postcard. S.S. Bose, a collector of early nautch photographs, opined in the Kolkata Englishman in 1903 that Christian and Indian “moralists,” have nothing to say about the new…