Ceylon-Colombo Street Scene
A rich color palette pervades this scene.
Colombo
Packetting Tea, Colombo
A nice representation of a small portion of the human labor – a dozen people here – that went into the preparation and production of a commodity like tea.
Ceylon Banyan Tree Arch, Near Colombo
[Original caption] Ceylon. Banyan Tree Arch, near Colombo.
Ceylon. Road Near Colombo
[Original caption] Road near Colombo. This is the very fringe of Pettah or native quarter of Colombo. Coconut palms shade it from the hard blue sky and "the state o the sun"; the noise of brass-workers goes on incessantly under the bright red roofs.
Ceylon
A Singer Manufacturing Co. advertising card made in connection with the World Columbia Exhibition in 1893.
[Verso, Original caption] “There is a picturesque island in the Indian Ocean, separated from Peninsular India by the Gulf of Manaar.
Tom, Tom Beaters
A beautiful studio portrait featuring the "thammattama," drums used in Buddhist rituals in Sri Lanka. They may be derived from a frame drum used in Tamil Nadu, and their sound is said to have irritated British colonists.
Shipping Tea, Colombo
"People like me who came to England in the 1950s have been there for centuries," writes the Jamaican cultural theorist Stuart Hall, "symbolically we have been there for centuries. I was coming home.
Betel Leaf Seller, Colombo
A wonderfully posed studio shot by Plate & Co., the well-known Colombo postcard publisher and portrait artist.
Hindu Temple Colombo
[Original caption] Hindoo Temple, Colombo. In the Pettah or native quarter of Colombo is Sea Street, and in Sea Street are twin Hindoo temples, one of which is shown here.
Ceylon
A later "Greetings from" postcard where the divided back, allowing people to write messages on the back of cards in addition to the address, allowed the publisher to put many more photographs of the place on the front.
