MURSHIDABAD, INDIA, 19TH CENTURY

Mica (talc) was long used in Murshidabad to make decorative lanterns that hung at marriages and hanging lamps that were carried in Muharram processions (as illustrated in one of the paintings in this album). As Murshidabad declined, the nawabs no longer provided such decoration for festivals and so the artists responsible began to commercialise their technique for the new British market (Archer, 1992, p.193). They painted standard sets of pictures on mica depicting castes, occupations and festival scenes which were sold to travellers at the ghats where river-boats stopped on their way up and down the Ganges. It was a novelty that greatly attracted the British in India, and many albums of the type offered here were made specifically for Europeans who took them home as souvenirs of their time on the sub-continent.