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#Ceylon #Flora #HandColoured #Lithograph #BotanicalArt #DominicWinter #RareBooks #Peradeniya #Kandy #AntiqueCollecting #Horticulture #Botany #JournalOfBotany #RoyalSociety #NewYorkLibrary
A rare hand-coloured botanical work featuring Ceylon’s flowering plants sold for £7,500 at Dominic Winter Auctioneers on November 4, far exceeding its £400–600 estimate. The 100 lithographic plates were compiled by Henry Trimen, who served as director of Ceylon’s botanic garden at Peradeniya and previously worked at the British Museum, where he edited the Journal of Botany from 1871 until his death. Trimen succeeded G.H.K. Thwaites in 1879 and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1888.
The plates were published in four parts between 1893 and 1898 by Dulau and Co. of London as Plates in Illustration of a Hand-Book to the Flora of Ceylon, though the final installments appeared after Trimen died at Kandy in October 1896. The colouring was executed by G. de Alwis and R. Morgan, continuing a tradition started in 1818 by the garden’s Sinhalese draughtsman Harmanis de Alwis and carried on by his son William and later family members.
The copy sold was bound in contemporary quarter calf over marbled boards, with a title page for each part, a leaf explaining the plates, and a few double-page plates. Library stamps appear on the first title page and front endpaper, with a library card and pocket on the rear pastedown. A bookplate from the Horticultural Society of New York records the 1934 bequest of Kenneth K. Mackenzie (1877–1934), an American lawyer and amateur botanist noted for his extensive writings on North American sedges, particularly the genus Carex.
The report was provided by Georgina Wroe, deputy editor of Antique Collecting and a journalist, author, and broadcaster with experience across national newspapers, magazines, and BBC radio.
