The Postage Explorer
Philately Life
An archive of Indian philately — exploring the world, one stamp at a time.
Every sheet in this archive was collected, catalogued and photographed by hand — a private study of India’s postal past, opened to anyone who cares to look.
I · The Collection
Five eras of Indian post
Digitised albums from the archive — postage, postal history and ephemera, arranged as they were issued. Begin anywhere.
II · Item of the Month
Four Annas, 1854
Lithographed in Calcutta and printed in two colours at a time when almost no post office in the world attempted it. Each sheet was drawn on stone by hand, so no two impressions are quite alike — the reason collectors have spent a century plating them.
- Issued1854, Calcutta
- ProcessLithograph, two colours
- PerforationImperforate
- ConditionUsed, octagonally cut to shape
III · India Through the Postcard
The country, as it was posted
Picture postcards carried India abroad long before photography was common — bazaars, ghats, railway stations and hill stations, written on the back in a stranger’s hand.
IV · A Postal Chronology
A century in ten stamps
The dates the archive is arranged around — each one an album of its own.
- 1852Scinde DawkThe first adhesive postage stamp used in Asia.
- 1854The first all-India issuesQueen Victoria lithographs, including the two-colour Four Annas.
- 1871Portuguese India, NativosGoa’s own crude, hand-set types.
- 1892French IndiaÉtablissements Français dans l’Inde begins its own series.
- 1902King Edward VIISingle star watermark; the definitives that carried the Raj.
- 1914C.E.F. and I.E.F.Indian field-force overprints, posted from abroad.
- 1937King George VIThe last long reign of British Indian postage.
- 1943Azad HindLabels of the Indian Legion, printed in Germany.
- 1947IndependenceThe first stamps of a free India — flag, aircraft, Ashoka capital.
- 1950Inauguration of the RepublicFour stamps for the twenty-sixth of January.