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.
Colombo
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.
Lakeside View, Kandy, Ceylon.
A postcard in Plate's "Art Card" format, a slightly embossed halftone rich in color and atmosphere.
Betel Leaf Seller, Colombo
A wonderfully posed studio shot by Plate & Co., the well-known Colombo postcard publisher and portrait artist.
A Kandyan Lady
A refreshing portrait of a woman looking straight back at the viewer, not contained by the frame. Most probably from a portrait by Charles Scowen in the 1870s, who photographed the same woman in slightly different poses.
Root of an India Rubber Tree at Colombo, Ceylon
[Original caption] The tree grows to a height of 120 feet and has a large spreading head. A channel is in the bark with a cutlass for the mil to flow and is caught in gourds.
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.
A Corner of Kandy Lake, Ceylon
An example of how nicely the real photo postcard could be used to maximize the depth and mystery of black and white photography, here on glossy stock by A.W. Plate & Co., a firm which tried every type of postcard printing process.
Jaffna Tamil, Ceylon
An artfully placed stamp gives this card additional character.
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.
