Baramullah, Kashmir.
An almost painterly postcard when one examines the detail in the foreground of men and women workers, pounding and transporting grain; there are even people at the top left doing something under the tree.
People
Rajputana Aboriginal
[Original caption] Aboriginal, Rajputana. Rajputana is an administrative territory of India. It lies between Sind, the Punjab, the North-Western Provinces, and the several native states of Central India.
How our Food is cooked The Bawarchi The Cook
A humorous card by one of the largest Raj retailers, comparing Western and Eastern cooks and procedures. It is signed by the artist Geo[rge] D. and dated [19]11 in the bottom right corner.
Calcutta
Nautch dancers inspired stories like Hassan Shah’s The Nautch Girl, “the first known modern Indian novel” in the 1790s, as well as the first Urdu novel, the story of the Lucknow courtesan Umrao Jaan Ada in 1899.
A version of this card was sent by
The "Chuprassie"
Hobson-Jobson's, the famous dictionary of Anglo-Indian terms, defines Chuprassy as "the bearer of a chapras, i.e. a badge-plate inscribed with the name of the office to which the bearer is attached. The chaprasi is an office-messenger, or henchman,
Saiyad Mobarik Ali, Moolvee (Learned Man)
One of siz postcards in Raphael Tuck & Sons first "Native Life in India" series, which featured the work of an artist with the initials G.E.M. who remains unidentified.
A Belle of Northern India
[Original caption] A Belle of Northern India. The women of Delhi and district are, to Western eyes, rather more pleasing than those of many other parts of India.
Kashmir Nautch Girl
A postcard that shows off the great detail achievable in the collotype printing process.
Pattawala (Office Peon)
This image by the Indian painter M.V. Dhurandhar celebrates the rise of a new type of worker in early Mumbai - the peon who worked for a business owner or manager and would ultimately gather some authority by controlling access to his boss.
33rd Punjabis
A postcard by the high-quality publisher A.C. Black and Co., Soho Square, London that was used to market their book The Armies of India by Col. A.C. Lovett and Major C.F. MacMunn (1911). The 33rd Punjabis go back to 1857 as the Allahabad Levy and
