The growth of a city like Bombay was largely dependent on the work of laborers who carried bricks and building materials on wicker baskets on construction sites, much like they do today, which must be part of the reason why they were such common
The original black and white postcard predating the color version.
A humourous postcard showing a sleeping father, who is supposed to be pulling the punkah [fan] string to cool the off-framed European, but instead has delegated the task to his son. The punkahwallah not doing his duty was a common postcard theme.
In her Tourist's India (1907), Eustace Alfred-Reynolds Ball writes: "Colonel Durand in his "Making of a Frontier" gives in few words a picturesque yet accurate description of Srinagar from the river : "The town, a huddled mass of lightly-built
The photographic original of one-half of the lithograph A Fair Exchange by W. Cooper.
This may be the very cottage where Bremner had an indelible experience. He writes in his autobiography “I never spent such a night. The melting snow was trickling on to the bed through apertures in the ceiling.
Postcards were an important advertising tool for hotels from the mid-1890s, when Alpine hotels in Austria, Germany and Switzerland helped to popularize the medium.
An unusual embossed scene, likely in Andhra Pradesh, where the frame contrasts nicely with the blue canal. Produced by a missionary organization, probably to raise money or advertise their activities in India.
Although the women do look somewhat similar in this set of a dozen Mughal Empresses, they can be identified individually thanks to the Urdu captions beneath each: [From Top Left to Top Right, First Row] Jamila Khatoon W/o [Wife of] Muhammad Mirza,
Some of the most interesting postcards are bazaar and storefront scenes, which can be staged or candid, but always seem to contain a wealth of information about life a century or more ago.
