Bombay, Bombay Presidency, British India.
Photographer: William Johnson.
Sinewy in appearance and scantily clad as befitting the hot weather of Western India, a Mohammedan man with a white beard sharpens a knife helped by an apprentice, in this photo taken by William Johnson sometime before 1860.
His tool of trade, a makeshift wooden platform on which is placed a homemade whetstone. A smoothly chiselled stone wheel with a wooden cylinder passing through a neatly cut hole in the centre. As his apprentice, possibly his son or grandson, spins the cylinder by pulling a small piece of rope back and forth, the wheel gathers momentum, sharpening the knife.
Johnson spent nearly half his life as a hobbyist photographer chronicling the people of Western India by their religion, profession and place in the social hierarchy.
Which during his age was something of an exotic diet for both the English gentry back home and those who had established roots in British India. Folks who were hungry to know more about a people who had differed from them drastically in habits, customs, dress and beliefs.
His collection of photos now serves as a time machine to view the life and times of a bygone era, and course material for portrait photographers. Though the rudimentary sharpening wheel can still be found in rural parts of modern India.
This photo by William Johnson comes from the archives at the Leiden University Library, in the Netherlands. Founded in 1575, the Leiden University Library is a public research university and the oldest centre of higher studies in this European state.
