An Indian Fakir
Although it is a single fakir at the doorway who is the subject of the postcard's title, it is the colors of the entrance to the Golden Temple in Amritsar that catch our eye.
Although it is a single fakir at the doorway who is the subject of the postcard's title, it is the colors of the entrance to the Golden Temple in Amritsar that catch our eye.
[Original caption] The Kaid sits at his ease smoking his narghileh whose gilded bow his slave adroitly feds with tiny lumps of tobacco, keef or opium.
A humorous colonial postcard comparing clothes washing in England and India, part of a larger artist-signed series by the large Kolkata retailer.
"People like me who came to England in the 1950s have been there for centuries," writes the Jamaican cultural theorist Stuart Hall, "symbolically we have been there for centuries. I was coming home.
[Original caption] Bombay, unlike most of the other shipping towns of importance, is not situated upon a river.
Sent to R.S. Gibbons, c/o Mrs. N.L. Larler, J.G. Northhampton Road, Addiscombe, Croydon, Surrey, England: "Feb 4th [1919?]. Granny sent you 10/- [shillings] for Xmas. Ask R.M. to give it to you out of the Bank.
[Original caption] A Potter, Northern India. Fostered by "caste," the native craftsman remains, contentedly, throughout his life in that sphere of industry into which he was born.
The Brahmin, as the art scholar Allan Life has noted, is reluctantly shuffling from tradition to modernity, from the temple behind him to the new city in front of him.
A very early lithographed card by Paul Gerhardt, who ran the lithographic printers at the Ravi Varma Press.
Sent to Miss Ettoi Virmillion, 52 West & South, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA, via San Francisco: [Recto] "Bombay 22 March 1905. Very bare. Will"
An early "Greetings from" concept card, printed in Italy, possibly to market train service between Mumbai and Kolkata, rife with tropes that Europeans would have associated with India: a tiger (stalking the train?