Lithograph

[Original French] La Poste Au Deccan. [end]

Kunzli Freres was a Swiss company known for high-quality lithographic printing, and this was part of a series of postcards celebrating the way mail was delivered around the world.

The GPO in Bombay was already the largest post office in India when this card was produced in 1899, with tens of millions of postcards passing through in a city of less than a million.

Over a million Indian troops served as part of the British forces in World War I; postcards were used to help recruit them, often in languages like Gujarati, though this card seems to have been intended more for British troops already serving in

A very early India-printed postcard signed by the chief lithographer at the Ravi Varma Press, Paul Gerhardt. Gerhardt was probably aware of Ravi Varma's prize-winning painting that year, Water Bearer, and we know from Raja Varma's diaries - the great