High Class People [handwritten]
An unusual humorous hand-painted postcard, as if riding high on a camel makes someone "high class." Hand-painted postcards seem in style to echo much earlier 19th century Company painting styles.
An unusual humorous hand-painted postcard, as if riding high on a camel makes someone "high class." Hand-painted postcards seem in style to echo much earlier 19th century Company painting styles.
A rare postcard from inside the city of Multan, one of the oldest cities in Punjab if not South Asia.
Although a coolie – "a hired labourer, or burden-carrier"(Hobson-Jobson, p. 249) – were at the bottom of the social ladder, and the word is said to originally come from Kolis, a hill-people in the Western Ghats, "whose savagery, filth and general
A humourous card from Moorli Dhur & Sons referring to gambling, a habit which many British soldiers in particular – at least from the postcard evidence – seem to have indulged in. The servant on the left is saying "Mrs.
[Original caption] An inhabitant of North-West India unsurpassed as a hill fighter. Although Mahomedans, the Pathans rebelled against the Mogul Emperors round about the sixteenth century and were in consequence forced to keep to the hills. [end]
To be a named "beauty" on a postcard was quite an honor at the turn of the century. Rukmoni is shown here in a studio with colorized backdrop.
One of the classic Bombay images from the period, this "village scene" with unruly palm trees was reproduced in many formats by Clifton & Co. though it is this collotype version that is the most captivating.
Sent from Perim (an island near Yemen) to
An artfully placed stamp gives this card additional character.
Another striking portrait by the great Indian artist M.V. Dhurandhar (1867-1944). This one was sent in 1905 by an Indian postcard collector, probably in Bombay, who pursued his hobby in a way that gives insight into early collector's fine tastes:
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A popular Jaipur postcard shows a woman spinning cotton in front of a traditional door.