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.
Kandyan Lady, Ceylon
A lavishly illustrated studio postcard; note how the presumably dancer is displaying her ghungroos on her ankles.
Compare to the black and white collotype of the same photograph.
Kandyan lady
Compare to the halftone color version of the same photograph.
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.
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.
