Ceylon definitives, 1935
George V’s reign was a busy time for stamp collectors, as territories around the world issued their first pictorial sets. It was a busy time for stamp printers, too, culminating in the Silver Jubilee Omnibus set. This was a massive undertaking; made all the more so by the use of recess-printing for all values. So it was not the ideal time for Ceylon to make the switch to pictorials. And the island’s booming economy needed a lot of stamps.
Ceylon’s first cash crop was coffee, which grew wild on the slopes of the central hill country. Governor Edward Barnes encouraged the development of plantations and built a network of roads from the coffee areas of Kandy to the Port of
