| Descripción del anverso |
Pale olive-green and grey note with a central royal coat of arms vignette supported by two lions and inscribed 'INCORPORATED BY ROYAL CHARTER', flanked by oval letterpress panels bearing the denomination 'TEN SHILLINGS'. The heading 'CEYLON BRANCH' runs in bold uppercase across the top, with bilingual Sinhala and Tamil inscriptions in the upper corners and lower border. The body text, rendered in copperplate script, carries the promise to pay the bearer on demand at the Colombo branch in the currency of the island, authorised 'By order of the Court of Directors', with a diagonal 'SPECIMEN' overprint in the lower right. |
| Leyenda del anverso |
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| Descripción del reverso |
The reverse is executed in olive-green and grey tones, centred on a large guilloche panel bearing 'TEN SHILLINGS' in bold white serif capitals within an ornate engine-turned rectangular frame. Four symmetrically placed oval guilloche rosettes occupy each corner as decorative security underprints, while a fine horizontal band of lathe-work guilloche traverses the centre of the note. A small printer's imprint line appears below the central panel. |
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The Chartered Mercantile Bank of India, London and China was one of the "exchange banks" that dominated colonial trade finance in Asia from the 1850s onward — funded in London, operating across Bombay, Calcutta, Shanghai, and Ceylon, moving money between ports rather than serving local retail depositors. Its Colombo branch was a minor node in that network, and Ceylon-issued notes from this bank are among the rarest surviving examples from the series. Most private bank paper in colonial Ceylon was retired quickly as the government tightened control over note issue during the 1860s and 1870s.
Perkins Bacon's steel-engraved guilloche work is immediately recognizable, borrowed from the same technical repertoire the firm used for postage stamps and government securities worldwide.