I first became entranced with Indian Mughal-style art about thirty years ago. It is easy to go a little crazy with these; at one time I had several hundred pieces. These days I have perhaps a dozen or so that I haven’t been able to give up and perhaps another dozen that I wonder why I ever bought in the first place.
It’s a long story but these stylized gouache paintings brought me back to baseball. At some point I realized that this method was perfectly suited to recreating the look of many early cards. Charles.
Helmar Sports Cards and Baseball History 
the lettering on the archer card, reminds me of lettering on some great psychedelic poster art by Moscoso and Griffin.
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I have to admit that I had to look them up. You are right; I wonder how aware they were of those scripts and whether or not they influenced them.
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I have the refractor version.
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Yup, I can definitely see it . . . the visual concept that eventually found expression in the modern trading card . . . and in the case of Helmar Brewing, a direct inspiration for the recent “framed” cards.. This one appears to be a rookie card from the hard-to-find “Great Indian Archers of the 16th Century” set 🙂
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Van, didn’t I read in the papers that you have a complete set of “Great Archers”? I think that I’ll post a few more of these next week.
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Nah, not a COMPLETE set . . . I’m still missing “Aamir the Accurate” and “Bhaskar of the Bullseye.” Sadly, they don’t turn up much at card shows 🙂
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