Cotton Cart
Cotton was the product that helped put 19th century Mumbai on the road to becoming one of the world's major cities. The product was celebrated on postcards like this virtual painting.
Cotton was the product that helped put 19th century Mumbai on the road to becoming one of the world's major cities. The product was celebrated on postcards like this virtual painting.
Itinerant workers, cobblers can repair all sorts of things. Note the sophisticated lithographic printing of this image, which some early Clifton & Co.
Mumbai grew from the 1860s through the 1890s largely because of the international cotton trade, which went from exporting cotton to textile manufacturing mills dotting the city.
A very early blue-toned postcard from booksellers Cobridge and Co. Sent from Bombay's Sea Post Office, date unclear, to Mr. J. Sherman, 12 Middleton Square, Clerkennell, E.C. London, England: "With fondest love to all from Arthur."
A gorgeously coloured collotype with the anonymous note on the front: "They are nearly as nice as ruby lips. best."
Although the word "dandy" originally referred to boatmen on the Ganges (Hobson-Jobson, 1906, p.
Although posed in the photographer's studio, it shows how young girls carried suitcases and bedding on behalf of visitors to the hillstation.
Part of a unique series of court-sized postcards showing the Kolar Gold Fields, India's largest until it was closed in 2001. That series includes Hajee Ismail Saits New Sawmill, Kolar Gold Fields and Extracting Gold, Cyanide Works, Kolar Fields.
Knife grinders are a vanishing craft. Doing this at home before electric knife sharpeners was difficult. Knife grinders would take their sharpening wheels from door to door and take care of the problem.
An earlier postcard view, before divided backs
One can see the rapid transformation of the postcard from a time when messages where only allowed on the front, as in this card.