Greetings from India
A "Greetings from India" postcard composed of many images, each of which were also separate postcards, within stenciled letters. On the back the owner wrote "What do you think of the square tacks?"
1900-1909
The Jute Industry-stripping the fibre from the cane after steeping.
"Another sign of the transition from the wet to the dry season was to be seen in the immense number of jute-stem stacks standing on every field and lawn," wrote Nirad Chaudhry in his Autobiography of an Unknown Indian. "After the bark which yields
Arhai-Din-Ka-Jhopra, Ajmere
A striking collotype published in many versions by Clifton & Co. The Arhai-Din-Ka-Jhopra was built in the 13th century by the first Muslim Sultan in India, Qutb-ud-Din Aibak, and before him by Abu Bar of Herat, Afghanistan.
Water Bullock
Bullocks that ferried water were called "water bullocks." This colored image by Clifton & Company, one of the earliest mass publishers of postcards in Mumbai (Bombay) was fairly popular, perhaps because of its rich colors.
J. & G. Hagenbeck's Indian Exhibition
In Ali Raza's excellent book Revolutionary Pasts Communist Internationalism in Colonial India (Tulika Books, 2022) there is this note from a police report in 1926: "A public meeting was held . . . under the auspices of the Nau Jawan Bharat Sabha to
Bullock Carriage [handwritten]
![Bullock Carriage [handwritten]](https://www.paperjewels.org/sites/default/files/styles/square_thumbnail/public/slides/bullock-carriage_0.jpg?itok=YmBRS3jf "Bullock Carriage [handwritten]")
A zenana carriage offered veiled transport for women through the city. These single cards are similar to Chinese handmade postcards and are often court-sized with undivided backs, and not often mailed abroad.
A version of this card is postmarked
Manak Chowk, Jaipur
Gobindram Oodepyram produced a number of hand-tinted, two colour, postcards like this one where the pink, for example, is strategically deployed to lead the eye down the broad avenue.
Cooly Woman, Darjeeling.
Although taken in the firm's studio, with the woman posing upright, one can from this portrait and the wooden beam infer the literally backbreaking work hillstation workers endured.
Kazi, Mahomedan Preacher
A lithographic portrait, which by this time had become a lesser used printing process for postcards.
The Cattle Show at Pushkar, Ajmer
An embossed frame sets off a rare early postcard of what is presumably the famous Pushkar fair, with the colonial perspective of a onetime owner scrawled across the top: "Does not look much like our Cattle Shows."
