The Qutub Minar on toilet soaps, 1899-1901.

 

On display today is a print of Delhi’s famed Qutub Minar on Gustav Boehm’s toilet soaps from the late 19th century. The Boehm family were Hessian manufacturers of toilet soaps, and from 1899–1901 their products came with images of historic places and monuments from around the world. Their series, Reise um die Welt (“Voyage around the World”), featured sites from across the British Empire, including the Qutub Minar.

While the Qutub Minar was already known to travellers and officials within the British Empire, Boehm’s soap represents an early form of advertising that helped disseminate its image more widely. We know that images of India and Delhi’s historic sites were beginning to circulate through photo postcards at the time. But placing the Qutub on an everyday product like soap brought it into domestic, even intimate spaces—helping to establish Delhi’s monuments as central visual emblems of the city. In this way, advertisements like Boehm’s did not merely reflect the Qutub’s importance—they actively helped produce and promote Delhi as a city of monuments.