Gruss aus Carl Hagenbeck's Indien 1898
An early Exposition postcard by a German exotic people's promoter. The handwritten message, dated Dec.
Undivided back
Mr. D. E. Wacha
President, 17th Congress, Calcutta 1901
Celebrating one of the many Parsee businessmen who supported the Independence struggle and founded the Indian National Congress Party.
The Bhistie
A contemporary artist's rendering of one of the most popular postcard subjects, the all important "bhistie" who brought water in an animal skin to the thirsty.
The Bazaar, Leh
Probably one of the earliest if not the earliest postcard of Leh, capital of the former Kingdom of Ladakh. Little is known about R. E. Shorter, a photographer with offices in Sialkot, Punjab, on the route to Kashmir, and Kashmir.
Rabindranath Tagore
A portrait of Tagore published three years after his death. In Krishna Dutta and Andrew Robinson's excellent biography of this great man (Bloomsbury, 1995), there appears this translation of this poignant poem:
Karma (The Worker), 1896
No sign of my
The Great Hero of India
Few if any politicians were as popular as Bal Gangadhar Tilak, the Maharashtrian politician and freedom fighter who spent many years in jail. He was referred to by British authorities as "the father of Indian unrest."
Tea Garden, Gauhati, Assam
There are very few early postcards – besides a handful of missionary ones – of Assam, an area in northeastern India brought under British control in the first half of the 19th century following wars with the then Kingdom of Burma.
Parsi Ladies
One of the most popular early postcards of Parsees was this arresting composite portrait by Clifton & Co. The original albumen likely dates to the late 1890s.
JRE Hall Line Shipping - Karachi
An early advertising postcard for the Hall Line, which was bought by the larger Ellerman Lines in 1903 (the firm lasted under this name until 2004). Note how nicely a traditional boat and fisherman populate the foreground, a sailing boat in the
Fisher Woman
An early postcard and theme of Bombay artists, the fisher woman, with a basket of fish on her head. A fishing vessel is in the background, its mast at an angle which adds energy to her pose.
