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.
Labor
A Cobbler
Itinerant workers, cobblers can repair all sorts of things. Note the sophisticated lithographic printing of this image, which some early Clifton & Co.
Sampling and Weighing Cotton
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.
Hillman Carrying Wood
Many postcards speak to the physical labor that allowed residents of hillstations to warm their homes and cook their food, often leading men and women with permanently bent backs.
A Boothea Milkman
A studio portrait full of contradictions. The milkman from Darjeeling of Tibetan ancestry is shown with an English church in the deep background.
Panwala (Betel Nut Dealer)
A rather impressive portrait, from a slightly low angle, giving the boy a certain grandeur. Unfortunately, a most rarely postcarded occupation.
Postmen of the British Empire: Burmah, India
Part of a series showing postmen around the world. This was postmarked in Spalding, Britain,May 6, 1905 and addressed to Mr. G. Riseley, 41 Norfolk Street, King,s Lynn: "Parcel arrived safely. Vest too large, others a fit. Jack."
We Often Go Rattling Along In These Rickety "Rickshaws"
Part of a series of calendar and regular postcards by the Kolkata artist Merton Lacey made for US troops in the city supporting the Allied front against Japan and supporting China during World War II.
Silversmith
Looking at this collection of craftsmen and spare surroundings of the workshop, one realizes how much of the fine silver work from Kashmir was a matter of manual labor and skills.
Cotton Pickers
Many early Bombay postcards focused on the cotton trade, the source, with opium, of much of the city's early wealth.
