Paper Jewels : Postcards from the Raj

Postcards were to the people in 1900 what the internet is today. They created the means for the first mass distribution of images.

“Paper Jewels” tells the story of postcards during the Raj, and includes India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Burma. It is the first book on the subject and the first to reproduce hundreds of professionally restored images in their original format. The book uncovers such gems as the early postcards of the great Indian painter M. V. Dhurandhar and the Ravi Varma Press, the exceptional work of an early Austrian lithographer in Kolkata, and cards produced by a German printer in Mumbai. The essays address the major cities and regions important to postcard publishing and its key themes —dancers, religion, tea, soap, famines, fakirs, humor and warfare. This volume contains reproductions of the most beautiful and popular postcards of the era, telling the stories of the first postcard publishers in the subcontinent between 1892 and 1947. Many of the images in the book have never been published since their first runs a century ago.

• Author: Omar Khan
• 364 pages, hardcover
• 12 1/3 x 9 1/3 inches