Bhils are a name for ancient tribes across a wide swathe of India, including Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Rajasthan as well as in parts of far-eastern India. Although Hobson-Jobson claimed that "no distinct Bhil language survives" (p.
The basket bazaar of Madras was renowned for its beautiful wicker work and offered many kinds of basket weavers a platform to show their craft and sell a wide variety of goods.
This is a hand-painted postcard from around 1905, rather rare in India compared to, say, China where at the time numerous hand-painted postcards were being sent abroad.
A curious case of an Italian word finding itself stamped upon a postcard of a characteristic type in India (the fakir, in this case a mendacious one). Mountebank is an old word for a charlatan, or salesman of quack medicines.
A postcard that celebrates the arrival of a new machine at the Kolar gold fields, 160 miles west of Madras (Chennai). The mill was already described as being powered by electricity in 1902. This postcard by Wiele & Klein in Madras shows how the
Some of the most beautiful and rarest early postcards of India are hand-painted, often with penciled titles and the simply printed word "post card" on the back.
[Original] Souvenir East Indies Pagode des Ganges [end]
Among the earliest postcard series of India, with postally used samples dating back to 1897, according to Ratnesh Mathur, co-author of Picturesque India. Interestingly this is a crude halftone
Bourne & Shepherd are said to have begun their photographic activities in 1840, a year after the invention of photography (see Macmillan, Seaports of India and Ceylon, 1928, p.
A magnificent early lithographic postcard of Bombay, show Marine Drive before the Art Deco buildings became a dominant feature in the 1930s.
This unusual, sepia-ish lithographic postcard is probably by Paul Gerhardt at the Ravi Varma Press even though it is not signed by him with the Press imprint.
