Posted on: 26 October 2010

A street in Bombay - 1867

This chromolithograph is taken from plate 4 of William Simpson's 'India: Ancient and Modern'. The artist depicts the teeming street of the bustling city of Bombay (Mumbai), a hub of India trade. A distinct feature of the architecture was the elaborate red-and-green coloured carving on wooden pillars and beams of houses. The man in a white turban reading a book is a Parsi priest. Simpson wrote: "the high turban of a Parsi is sure to greet you everywhere". The Parsis were adherents of the Zoroastrian religion and mostly concentrated in Bombay. Their ancestors had fled Muslim persecution in eighth-century Iran in the eighth century. At the time of this image they began to adopt items of western dress along with their native clothing.

Source : British Library


 View Post on Facebook

Comments from Facebook

Chromolithography is a method for making multi-color prints. This type of color printing stemmed from the process of lithography, and it includes all types of lithography that are printed in color.[1] When chromolithography is used to reproduce photographs, the term photochrom is frequently used. Lithographers sought to find a way to print on flat surfaces with the use of chemicals instead of relief or intaglio printing. More at Wiki : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromolithography

this artwork takes me to d perfect description of mumbai in a marathi book named 'mumbaiche varnan' by G T Madkholkar written in 1863

I would have loved to walk down that street at that time

looks a lot like those turkish yalis along the bosphoros !!!! esp the supports...

So prosperous!

lovely chromo

One can still see these elaborately carved wooden facades in Surat.

@paresh- it can be yellow gate or some other gate of d fort. possibility of gate way of India structure is not there as GWOI was erected in 1911.

this wooden carved bracket,,,,surely comes from tradition of haveli architecture of gujarat..may be this street was somewhere in bhuleshwar pld mumbai...