Bronzes from Ceylon, chiefly in the Colombo Museum
A 1914 catalogue of bronze objects from Ceylon, compiled by Ananda Coomaraswamy for the Colombo Museum, published in Colombo and illustrated with plates of ritual and domestic metalwork. The plates show ritual objects, vessels and tools drawn in fine line engraving on cream paper, with each object labelled by figure number. A designer could take from them the clear hierarchy of ornate finials, the repeated sculptural forms, and the tidy plate layout with numbered captions.



