Galle Face Hotel, Ceylon
An exceptionally well put together early advertising postcard. The palm trees around the hotel image extend the real ones inside the frame, the one on the top right seems to jut out from the actual ones.
Colombo
A Mendicant
The term mendicant refers to begging or relying on charitable donations, and is most widely used for religious followers or ascetics who rely on charity to survive. Plate & Co.
The Entrance, Mount Lavinia Hotel, Colombo
The Mount Lavinia Hotel was originally built in 1806, and after falling into disrepair, Mount Lavinia House was rebuilt in 1830 by the British Governor Edward Barnes at a cost of 30,000 pounds.
Singhalese ayah (Nurse Maid)
Plate & Co. in Colombo dominated the postcard trade on the island of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), and sold half a million postcards in 1907 alone, an enormous sum for a single publisher.
Colombo. Katamaran, Native Fishing Boat
[Original caption] Catamaran-Native Fishing Boat. These, as well as the canoes of Ceylon, are very picturesque. The fine human figures of the crew, the dark sails against a deep blue sky, would give an artist continual delight.
Bristol Hotel, Colombo
Hotel advertising postcards played an important role in the rise of the medium; they are often found in guest rooms today too, ready to send home and market the establishment where a loved one is staying.
Greetings from John Hagenbeck & Co.
[Original German translated] Buy tea from Hagenbeck's Ceylon Tea.
The main driver of Sri Lanka’s economic growth during the colonial period was the tea industry.
Shipping Tea, Colombo
In the 1860's the coffee rust fungus disease destroyed much of the the coffee industry of Sri Lanka. In the late 1860s, a Scotsman named James Taylor established the first multi-acre tea plantation in the country.
Madras Merchant, Colombo
An unusual postcard in the use of so much black, which beautifully brings out the portrait of this man, his beard and clothing (black was expensive for printers due to the amount of ink consumed). Due to better economic prospects in Sri Lanka, during
