Greetings from Carl Hagenbeck's India 1898
A rare and exceptional early color postcard by Carl Hagenbeck, the German circus and exotic people's promoter whose fairs throughout continental Europe drew large audiences.
Color
Hindu Beauty
A lithographic card, most likely done by an Indian artist and printed in Britain. Note how nicely the woman is foregrounded from a low angle, with a smaller temple in the background and a swirl of green that helps give life to the portrait.
Golden Temple & Gate, Amritsar
A beautiful embossed and hand-tinted card showing the entrance to Harminder Sahib, the holiest of Sikh sites in Amritsar. All the subdued colors on the entrance way were added by hand through stencils, individually on each postcard.
Cotton Cart
A well-reserved "Lichtdruck" in German or "light-print" which offers the touch of a painted work for one anna.
Cotton Cart
"Thousands of these carts, all over Bombay. 14/4/06"
Bhopal Palace, Main Entrance
[Original caption] Bhopal Palace–Main Entrance. The rulers of Bhopal have also been very friendly towards the British and the alliance dates back beyond a century. The State maintains a a force of regulators and cavalry, highly efficient.
Tom, Tom Beaters
A beautiful studio portrait featuring the "thammattama," drums used in Buddhist rituals in Sri Lanka. They may be derived from a frame drum used in Tamil Nadu, and their sound is said to have irritated British colonists.
Hamburg. India Docks
One of those postcards that reminds us how extensive trade was at the turn of the century between India and continental Europe, in as much as the Germans published a postcard showing just the area in Hamburg harbour where ships for India were docked.
A Native Boat, Bombay
A nicely composed postcard showing the progression in the size of ocean-going vessels, from the small boat in the foreground, to the larger ship on right, and even larger ship in the distance on the left.
Orthodox Hindu Widow
An exquisite Dhurandhar portrait, this of a widow framed in front of a tree and a temple in the background. Orthodox widows were normally not permitted to remarry and had to obey strict dress codes like not wearing a blouse under her sari.
