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Air-India Travel Poster:Kashmir - The Paradise on Earth.

31/7/2016

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“Agar firdous baroye zameen ast, hami asto, hami asto hami ast” – Amir-e-Khusru Dehluvi
(If there is paradise on earth, It is here, it is here, it is here).

The serene beauty of Kashmir has attracted visitors from far and wide. One of the oft-used symbols for India travel, just like the Taj Mahal, the Dal Lake and the Shikara (house-boat) epitomise all that is sublime about the valley. I recently came across these 1950s travel posters.
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Clearly, the India Tourism office had issued these posters first, and also supplied copies to the airlines, who overprinted their names. Wonder if I come will come across examples of these posters used by other airlines.
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Award winning Air-India First Flight Philatelic Exhibit added

23/7/2016

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This week I have added the singe frame exhibit by Ashish Talwar. This exhibit is very informative, and has some superb rarities, many of which are shown on various other pages in my web-site. Here you can enjoy the exhibit page by page along with the write-up prepared by the exhibitor.

The Silver Medal winning exhibit is titled 'The First Flight of Air-India International', and was exhibited as frame number 12069 in Brasiliana 2013 World Stamp Exhibition held at Rio De Janeiro between November 19 - 25, 2013.


I've also added:

  • Two private covers, unlisted in PT from private collections.
 
  • Magic Carpet, The Staff Magazine of Air-India, Vol. 6, No. 8. October 1962. Released on the 30th Anniversary of the First Airmail Flight of Tata Sons piloted by JRD Tata, Neville Vincent and Homi Barucha is stages, this entire issue is dedicated to the flight with lots of rare pictures and information. I have provided a link for you to view or download the pdf from my dropbox account.
 
  • A new page has been added in the Collections section under the Air-India Aircraft Gallery. This has images of Other Early Aircraft of Air-India International and its predecessor airlines.
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Meet an artist from Air-India International who designed their Travel Posters in the 1950s

23/7/2016

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This week I met Nargis Wadia (nee Khambata) who worked in the Air-India International Art Studio during the 1950s. She graciously invited Vivek and me to her lovely Sea Face home, and regaled us with memories of her stint with Air-India International.

Having completed art school, and after a brief stint with Shilpa, an ad agency who did a lot of early work for Air-india International, Nargis joined Air-India International directly, and got to work with persons like Bobby Kooka, Jal Cowasji, Shetye etc; legends who created the Air-India magic.

Nargis designed several travel posters for the airline, and I will post images of those here, once I get to take some high quality photographs.
She has also carefully preserved some examples of her work and has kindly permitted me to post images of these. These include hand painted work-in-progress examples, Printers Proofs etc. of scarves that were gifted as promotion items, menu cards, wine lists etc. Nargis spent 3-4 years at Air-India International before relocating to London to build her career in Advertising.
Here are some examples of her work. On the top left, we have a hand painted design for a scarf. On the top center we have a printers proof of the menu card design which has the artists name signed just below the right hand of the woman. On the top right is another hand painted design of a Poster design. This poster was used to promote the new Slumberettes introduced in the Lockheed Super Constellations acquired by the airline in 1954.

I have added here a link to my Dropbox account for you to enjoy all the lovely items she has preserved.
Post Script: Very nice article appear in Conde Nast Traveler Magazine on May 11, 2018 about Nargis Wadia and her stint in Air-India. Click here to know more.
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Updates to the web-site last week

16/7/2016

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  • I have added a Return Flight covers gallery in the Aerophilately section.

The Return flight left London on the morning of 12 June 1948, landing in Bombay on 13 June after halting at Geneva and Cairo. Return mail on this flight is not very common, and only a limited number are thought to exist. Each of the three points of origin have an interesting story, which I will recount in this page. Additionally, no mail originating from any other location has been seen.
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  • I've also started a Useful Links page. This will connect you to other web-sites and on-line resources that may be interesting and useful.
  • Had posted a link to the Aerophilately page on some Whatsapp groups, and other collectors posted some lovely images of covers from their collection related to the 1948 Air-India International first flight. Have asked them for jpg or jpeg images, and permission to post here.
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Margaret's Hope

15/7/2016

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My search for Air-India flight covers often results in very interesting discoveries. Here is one that has the 12 anna Air-India commemorative stamp on the Official Souvenir Cover, and is cancelled TUNG, 7 JUN 48, 2.20 PM. 'Tung! never heard of such a place, so let me find out more,' I said to myself.
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So, Google, the omnipresent, and omniscient, told me that Tung is a post office in Darjeeling (new name Darjiling), W. Bengal, with a Pin Code 734224. Ok, so the story starts getting more interesting. Then I flipped the cover around, and was fortunate to find the senders information on the reverse flap.
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The cover was sent by Lt. Col. L. Hannagan, Margaret's Hope Tea Estate, Tung, India. A tea estate in Darjeeling, makes sense, but a name like Margaret's Hope got to have a story around it. The present owner of tea estate, Goodricke's website has the very touching story on how it was named Margret's Hope.

Situated in north Kurseong at an elevation ranging from 950 meters to 1830 meters, the 150-year-old famous Margaret's Hope Tea Estate was once called Bara Ringtong. At the beginning of the 20th century, legend has it, the then-manager of Ringtong, Mr Bagdon, rechristened it as Margaret's Hope.

The wistful name refers to a great tragedy that befell Mr Bagdon in 1827.

Mr Bagdon, who was the first to plant tea on the southwest ridge of the Balsun River, had a daughter called Margaret. According to the tale, Margaret came all the way from Britain, visited the estate and fell in love with its sublime beauty. She was so taken by the region that she made up her mind to settle at the picturesque Bara Ringtong for good. But, much to her dismay, she had to return to England accompanied by her mother.

However, fate had other plans for Margaret and her hapless father. On her way back to England, during a tortuous four-month journey, Margaret took ill aboard and died on the way. Mr Bagdon continued his duties as the manager of the estate, but was overcome with grief. Sources say he had a vision of his departed daughter, while taking a walk through the estate and remembered how she had hoped she would live there one day. This singular experience inspired him to call the estate Margaret's Hope.

The Margaret's Hope estate is now spread across 586.16 hectares. Although set up in the 1830s, the garden became commercially viable only in 1864. Today, the garden's high-altitude tea buds are harvested in spring and are prized by connoisseurs all over the world.

After 150 years, Margaret's Hope continues to produce its renowned first flush (spring) tea, which has a flowery aroma and golden colour. Its second flush produces a mellow cup with a  muscatel character and bronze colour.

                                                                     Philatelic Interest

This cover is a great addition to our web-site, and very collectible for a variety of reasons. It missed the flight. No Post office should have accepted the cover in the mail after June 5. This was made quite clear in the DG's circular, and this was a contravention. Not only that, it was not supposed to be cancelled locally, but sent to Bombay for franking and onward dispatch. This was not done, another contravention. No Boxed cachet applied. Cancelled at Tung, an unusual place of origin, makes it even more interesting.

Many thanks to Arun Agarwal of Kanpur for procuring this beauty for me.

Update posted on 5 November 2016:
The story does not end here. Gaurav Gupta was kind enough to share images of a similar cover he obtained, with a slight twist. This is from the same Lt. Col. L. Hannagan, at Margaret's Hope Tea Estate, P.O. Tung, W. Bengal, India. However it is postally cancelled TUNG, 14 JUN 48. Now this makes it a highly collectable cover since it is later use of the stamp, and should not have been accepted by the postal authorities. I've posted images below:
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Monkey Business

12/7/2016

1 Comment

 
I recently acquired a travel poster produced by Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS) promoting services to India which was part of a larger series of similarly themed posters they issued around the same time. These posters are not dated, and the image on the lower right is of the only information printed on the poster.
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The SAS monkey looked very familiar, and I found this February 1959 Air-India International Time Table with a strikingly similar image. Here we have a trio of monkeys in the famous 'see no evil, hear no Evil, speak no evil' pose.

Now, Air-India has used many exotic birds, large cats and elephants in their Time Table art,  but never monkeys. So, is it just a co-incidence, or did one airline copy the other.

Would love to hear from other collectors, especially if someone can date the SAS poster for me.
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Additions made

10/7/2016

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Welcome to my web-site. Today I've added a few pages.
  • Started the blog page, to make it easy to update you on additional material posted, and more news about Air-India collectables, and Air-India Aerophilately.
  • I've added more aircraft pictures today of the Lockheed Constellation L-749  and Lockheed Super Constellation L-1049 in the COLLECTIONS/AI AIRCRAFT PICTURES section.
  • I've also added more covers to the AEROPHILATELY section. There are several other interesting aspects to study when collecting flight covers related to this flight. Look under MORE INTERESTING COVERS for:
  1. Covers that are franked with an interesting combination of stamps
  2. Covers that actually carry an arrival postmark in the UK
  3. Covers that were not flown, but mailed within India only
  4. Covers that missed the inaugural flight, and went on a later flight
  5. Examples of later usage of the special Air-India postage stamp.
         In this section I have displayed multiple examples of each type, and provided an explanation where needed.
additions-made-air-india-collector.pdf
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    Here I will update you on interesting information about
    Air-India and other topics related to Indian Civil Aviation.

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