Osian's Card
Established in 2000 by Neville Tuli, Osian’s is India’s foremost arts and cultural institution that has been focused on building India’s artistic, cultural and educational infrastructure, fusing artistic, & creative excellence with financial self-sufficiency.
The Centre for Archiving, Research and Development (CARD) lies at the heart of Osian’s unique infrastructure building programme. Since its inception, CARD has been focused on creating, preserving and disseminating the knowledge bases for our collection of Indian, Asian and World artistic and cultural heritage. Today the Collection houses over 375,000 artworks.
The CARD is the world’s most comprehensive private textualand visual Archive focusing on the Indian, Asian & WorldArts & Cinema. The ‘Arts’ are sub-divided into Ancient,Medieval, Modern and Contemporary Arts, the Antiquarian Books, Prints & Photography Collection contains rare 17-20th century Books, Engravings, Aquatints, Lithographs, Chromolithographs, Posters, Postcards, Advertisments,Calendars, Playing cards, Textile Labels, Maps on the Indian sub-continent. The Photograph Collection spans early 19th and 20th century British-Indian photography as well as mid 20th century works. The collection on crafts and vintage popular culture artifacts includes Automaton, Toys, Puppets, dolls and hand-made tribal masks , to name a few.
The Cinema Archive is the core of CARD and unquestionably the largest archive of film publicity material in the world. Itincludes wide-ranging publicity material and memorabilia of Indian, Asian and World Cinema comprising of photograph slobby cards, show cards, posters, costumes, props, hoardings. Since 2005, Osian’s has ventured into building a world-class collection of Indian Antiquities, which include art works such as Miniatures, Thangkas, Sculptures and other rare cultural artifacts.
With the continual expansion of the archive, the creation of various new eclectic tangential foci is inevitable. The cohesion of Tuli’s eye and vision then starts integrating those sections into the larger framework and major areas of focus suddenly emerge. The growth of the art related to the Japanese Samurai is one such example.
An important addition to the Osian’s Archive has been the creation of an Economic database for the arts wherein updated financial information about auctions on Indian Asian and Arab Art are documented, analysed and available for reference to a wide spectrum of institutions. The ET Art Index is an important offshoot of such a database and service.
As Osian’s prepares to open up CARD to the public through its forthcoming museum-cum-edutainment complex, The Osianama (at the erstwhile Minerva cinema) it is inevitable that it will become the key knowledge-base across the world, attracting the finest scholars, writers and researchers to India, to study anew many key areas of the fine and popular arts, cinema and culture.
ARTS & ANTIQUITIES
The Collection of Ancient, Medieval, Modern and Contemporary fine arts and antiquities which contains over 6,000 artworks, includes rare Indian miniatures, medieval sculpture from India and Asia and Tibetan and Nepali thangkas, Indian National Art Treasures, paintings and drawings of Modern Indian Masters as well as the best of the established Contemporary artists from the Indian subcontinent and Asia. The Collection of visual and textual material in the Fine Arts section will serve the purpose of the most rigorous researcher and institution, opening out many new areas of study, exhibition and publication.
CINEMA
The Osian’s Cinema Archive houses the world’s largest collection of Cinema publicity memorabilia, with over 250,000 artworks, encompassing Hindi Cinema in near entirety and a continually expanding focus on Hollywood, Asian and world cinema. The collection includes vintage publicity material in the form of film posters (POS), photographic stills (PHO), handbills (HNB), song synopsis booklets (SSB), hoardings, showcards (SHW), glass slides (GLS), lobby cards (LBY, PHL), costumes, among other memorabilia. Rare collections of vintage Polish, Eastern European and Japanese poster designs (with focus on the 1950-60s), created by world renowned artists, also occupy an important place in the collection. Recently CARD acquired the famous Leonard Schrader collection of early Hollywood lobby cards furtherstrengthening the historical base of the birth and early years of Hollywood.
LITHOGRAPHY
The Lithograph collection spans document types from the visually fecund late 19th to early 21st centuries and traces a history of mass printmaking media like etching, engraving, lithography, oleography and offset printing, these artifacts largely belong to the period between 1862 to 1930. The highlights of this section include works of the Calcutta Presses, RRV Presses, Political Propaganda material, Antiquarian Advertisements, Calendars, vintage Travel & Magic Posters, Pilgrimage Charts, Playing Cards and Textile Labels.
ANTIQUARIAN BOOKS & PHOTOGRAPHY
The Books section of the Archive & Library includes an invaluable collection of antiquarian books numbering above 8,000. Highlights of the collection of rare illustrated books include the Daniells Bros., W. Hodges, John Griffiths, H.H. Cole, Thomas Biggs, full set of the pioneering volumes of the ASI, among many others. The Osian’s collection of contemporary books numbers above 40,000 and includes books on Indian and International Art, Architecture, Cinema, The Osian’s Archive contains some invaluable gems of British Indian photography of the sub-continent in the form of albumen prints, salt paper negatives and silver photographic prints. The collection houses photographs by Felice Beato, Linnaeus Tripe, William Baker, John Burke, Dr. John Murray, E.C.Impey, E.D.Lyon, William Henry Pigou, W.W. Hooper, V. Pont, Andrew Charles Brisbane Neill, Thomas Biggs, Samuel Bourne, Charles Shepherd, Major Henry Dixon, Lala Deen Dayal, Johnson & Henderson, Nicholas & Co., Frith & Co. and Lawrie & Co. among many others.
CRAFT & POPULAR CULTURE
The archive of Popular Culture presently contains various automaton, toys, dolls, puppets, masks, jewelery, chess and other board games, novel covers from the Indian sub-continent and Asia. The CARD archive traces and documents the history and evolution of these lesser known and often-neglected artifacts over time.
