Paper Jewels


Book Description

* The first book on the subject of postcards in the Indian subcontinent* More than 500 professionally restored images* Chapters dedicated to cities and movementsPostcards were to people in 1900 what the Internet was to the world in 2000. The world went from a thousand to a billion postcards in a very short span of time, with the finest painters from India, Austria and Japan getting involved.Paper Jewels is the story of postcards during the Raj, and covers India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Burma. It is the first book on the subject and features hundreds of professionally-restored images in original format, weaving together the postcard artists, photographers, and publishers who define the rich history of the medium. The author's research also charts the history and progression of the technological aspects of postcard publishing and its key players. The concluding chapters explore the role postcards played in the Independence struggle, from the First Non-Cooperation Movement through the Dandi March and Partition. It includes some of the earliest cards of Mahatma Gandhi, Mohammed Ali Jinnah and other political figures. Many of the images in the book have not been seen since they were first published nearly a century ago. Published in association with The Alkazi Collection of Photography.




British Indian Picture Postcards in Bengaluru


Book Description

Combining ethnographic and archival research, this book examines the lives of colonial-period postcards and reveals how they become objects of contemporary historical imagination in India. Picture postcards were circulated around the world in their billions in the early twentieth century and remained, until the advent of social media, unmatched as the primary means of sharing images alongside personal messages. This book, based on original research in Bengaluru, shows that their lives stretch from their initial production and consumption in the early 1900s into the present where they act as visual and material mediators in postcolonial productions of history, locality, and heritage against a backdrop of intense urban change. The book will be of interest to photographic historians, visual anthropologists, and art historians.




Picturesque India


Book Description

* The book provides a glimpse of the visual history of India at the beginning of the industrial travel era, a hundred years back* Explore the geographic diversity of 130+ cities through 550 picture postcards of pre-Partition India* The book contains a detailed catalogue of the printers, photographers and publishers of the first picture postcards of IndiaWith the dawn of the twentieth century, at the height of the British Empire, came significant changes in the landscape of India - formation of new capital cities in the plains and summer retreats in the hills, evolution of towns or nagores and pores, growth of cantonment towns with their military and civil lines, development of ports or pattanams and creation of cultural, educational and trading centers, all increasingly well connected by an extensive rail, road and, later on, air network. The 550 postcards featured in this book visually document this growth, while also capturing evidence of earlier times in India's fascinating polytemporal towns. The postcards are divided across six chapters representing six regions within India and Pakistan, as they were a hundred years ago. Through these picture postcards and the supporting text, the readers can vividly imagine what it would have been like to travel by road or rail across India during the period 1896-1947. An attractive and nostalgic record of the topography of the time, these picture postcards are an untapped resource for those interested in the evolution of cities, town planning, architecture, ethnography, sociology or, simply, travel.




Postcard From The Past


Book Description

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY MARK HADDON In Postcard From The Past, Tom Jackson has gathered a collection of the funniest, weirdest and most moving real messages from the backs of old postcards.




Postcards of Old Siam


Book Description

The postcards in this book cover the period from the turn of the 20th century during the last reign of King Chulalongkorn to the early 1930s, into the final years of King Prajadhipok's reign.










Fifteen Postcards


Book Description

History shapes those who travel through it Following the unexplained disappearance of her parents, and in a last ditch attempt to save the antique store she has inherited from financial ruin, Sarah Lester takes on a deceased estate. Amongst the estate is a collection of vintage postcards which lead Sarah on a journey through time. Sarah is unprepared for what these postcards hint at about their reclusive former owner, and soon they complicate her life in unimaginable ways, transporting her to Victorian London, colonial New Zealand and to the British Raj in India. Sarah has to fight her twenty-first century instincts, and a century of emancipation, to survive. Traversing three continents and two centuries, where tiger hunts and ruby necklaces are irrevocably entwined with murders and mysteries, auction houses and antiquities, Sarah is drawn into the enigma that could solve her parents' disappearance, and the question of should she stay or should she go, gets harder and harder to answer, the deeper she delves into the past. Perfect for fans of the Outlander series and lovers of The Time Travelers Wife. What people are saying about Fifteen Postcards: "If history lessons had been this entertaining, I would have scored an A+!." -Andrene Low, author of the Excess Baggage series "This story is one for devotees of adventurous historical fiction and tales of plucky young women finding their feet." -Stephanie Jones, CoastFM Book Reviewer "I think the author has done a commendable job in bringing the story to life and it's obvious that she has used extensive historical research to ensure that the story always feels authentic and that's not an easy feat to pull off." -JaffaReadsToo, Book Blogger "Kirsten McKenzie has written a very unusual novel: part time travel, part historical, and part antique review. Sarah’s adventures in other times and other continents, linked together by the postcards and the antiques, are well researched and entertainingly written." -Historical Novel Society What reviewers are saying about Kirsten McKenzie: "McKenzie has done a spectacular job of combining well-researched history with a hint of mysterious intrigue." -Anxious Canadian Blog "Kirsten Mckenzie has written an excellent foray into historical fiction. I'm honestly not quite sure how she was able to keep up with and integrate the different settings, time periods, and characters without losing her place. But she managed it magnificently." -Author Sean Whittaker "McKenzie’s descriptions of the shop are well drawn and wonderfully evoke the jumbled chaos of layers of leftovers from centuries of everyday life." -NZBookLovers blog