Indian Water Lift
Another small masterpiece of postcard design by M.V. Dhurandhar - the canopied tree, the rope diagonal and man supporting himself with it while drawing the eye down to the title.
This card was postmarked Oct.
Collotype
Writer's Buildings
The "Writer's Building" in then Calcutta is from where British India was governed from the later 1700s until 1857. "Writers" were recruits who came from England to make their fortunes with the British East India Company; some of them became
A View of Grain Shipping Kimari
The wester Raj province of Sindh was part of Bombay Presidency until 1936, a sleepy backwater until an irrigation project along the lower Indus in 1932 started the transformation of Karachi into one of the world's largest cities.
Fruit Market, Quetta
Density, darkness and detail combine in the full collotype effect. Note the tiny markers of European presence like the [Jab]bar Khan Fruit Seller sign in the top left.
Sun Procession - Jaipur
Discontinued after 1949 when Rajasthan province was created and acceded to India, the Sun Procession celebrated the descent of the Maharajah's family from the sun goddess Surya.
This card was sent to a Miss Rosemead in Sussex, England.
Extracting Gold, Cyanide Works, Kolar Fields
One can only imagine the enormous costs that accrued to the workers involved.
Dancing Girl - Jaipur
One of the less common "nautch girl" or dancing women postcards where the toll of the profession is visible on the sitter's face.
Fire near Ry Station - Lahore
An early documentary or journalistic postcard. The Kangra earthquake of April 5, 1905, some 200 miles away in northern Punjab, damaged many structures in Lahore, a city of 180,000 and may have caused the fire referenced by this postcard.
Parsee Tower of Silence, Bombay
Who knows what motivated the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig to send this postcard to Miss Hirschfeld in Vienna from Bombay on December 30, 1908? The 27-year old Zweig, a budding novelist whose popularity after World War I was unparalleled among German
Tanjore Palace
Higginbotham's was the rare bookseller which also became a prominent postcard publisher, probably the leading one in South India.
