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 contains some of the most beautiful and popular postcards telling the stories of the first postcard publishers between 1892 and 1947. The essays cover the major cities and regions important to postcard publishing and the key themes-from dancers to religion, to tea, soap, famines, fakirs, humour and warfare. The volume 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 a German one in Mumbai. Many of the images in the book have never been published since their first runs a century ago. AUTHOR: Omar Khan grew up in Vienna, Austria, and Islamabad, Pakistan. Khan has researched early photography throughout the subcontinent and is the author of From Kashmir to Kabul: The Photographs of John Burke and William Baker 1860-1900 (Mapin). He works as a software executive in San Francisco. 519 photographs
