“I’m a rare book librarian. I get to touch books every single day. My colleague and I have a joke that we are Defenders of Wonder. A physical book assigns a sense of reverence to the content inside. It’s the same feeling you get when you look at a painting or hear a piece of m...
Read More
Article:
Mosque in Kerala dates back to the Prophet's time
Times News Network | Jul 20, 2015
KODUNGALLUR (Kerala): One will find nothing unusual about this place of worship for Muslims as one drives past this town in central Kerala, just 30km north of Kochi. But it's when you go in and chat up w...
Read More
Sultan-ul-Mashaikh, Mehboob-e-Ilahi, Hazrat Shaikh Khwaja Syed Muhammad NIZAMUDDIN AULIYA (1238 – 3 April 1325) (Urdu: حضرت شیخ خواجہ سیّد محمد نظام الدّین اولیاء), also known as Hazrat Nizamuddin, was a famous Sufi saint of the Chishti Order in the Indian Subcontinent, an order that believed in ...
Read More
Article:
The vivid paintings that record a Briton's love of Delhi
By William Dalrymple
BBC News - 19 September 2015
A book of illustrations painted in the 1840s captures the Indian capital, Delhi, in all its glory shortly before the 19th Century's biggest anti-colonial revolt - and the British b...
Read More
Biography:
William Simpson (1823-1899) -- "Prince of Pictorial Correspondents"
By Adrian Lipscomb (Simpson's Great Grandson)
William Simpson is widely-known known today as the war artist whose first-hand depiction of the Crimean War helped bring home the reality of that ill-managed campaign to t...
Read More
Morya Gosavi or Moraya Gosavi (Morayā Gosāvi) alias Moroba Gosavi was a prominent saint of the Hindu Ganapatya sect, which considers the elephant-faced god Ganesha as the Supreme Being. Morya Gosavi is considered the chief spiritual progenitor of the Ganapatyas and has been ...
Read More
Article:
Nawabs and their love to see self on canvas
By Shailvee Sharda
TNN | Nov 2, 2014
LUCKNOW: Narcissism omnipresent now in the form of 'selfies'—pictures people click of themselves—was manifest in the form of portraits the high and mighty got painted of themselves for posterity. Nawabs of ...
Read More
Article:
What poetry has to do with math
By Rohan Murty
The Indian Express - 31 August 2015
Over the past year, I have heard my friend, mathematician Manjul Bhargava, give several public lectures on the deep connections between poetry, Sanskrit and mathematics. Like many other mathematicians bef...
Read More
Charles William Bartlett (British, 1860-1940)
Artist
Charles William Bartlett was one of the first artists to work with the publisher Watanabe Shozaburo. Bartlett designed a total of 38 woodblock prints for Watanabe, beginning in 1916 and lasting through 1925. Twenty-two of these prints were pro...
Read More
For some bibliophiles, the merits of the content are irrelevant: They judge books by their covers. An often-told tale has a collector, a Mr. Locker, taking a rare book with a small imperfection back to a binder. The binder examined the faulty cover and then, looking over his spec...
Read More
Article:
20 Libraries In India Which Will Appeal To Every Bookaholic!
By Mohita Adhvaryu
We often exalt libraries across the world for their collection, their architecture etc. but we often fail to notice the beautiful libraries we have at home. These libraries in India are not only spreading k...
Read More
“Whoever has entered rooms which used to house volumes, maybe over the course of centuries, is aware of the feeling of holding ancient documents and books, and can imagine the emotion to give a new life to works that a long sleep has laid still for years. Through the bookseller’s search there ...
Read More
Article:
The Man Who Purchased Kashmir
By R.S.Gull
Published in Kashmir Life - June 2015
It was extraordinary for an illiterate man to evolve into a crafty warlord who worked for others to create his own empire. Promoted by Khalsa Durbar, he allied with the East India Company, and eventually rai...
Read More
Essay:
Colonial India - British versus Indian Views of Development
By Bipan Chandra
Two divergent theories of economic development were evolved by the British and Indians during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. The two had divergent, rival perceptions of the nature of economic changes...
Read More
Essay:
England's First Non-European Civil Servant
By Jennifer Howes
This portrait is of Raja Ram Roy, the first non-European to be employed within the British Civil Service. When he arrived in Europe in 1831, it was never his intention to work in London. However, circumstances altered the fortun...
Read More