Help with India silver maker's mark

[dancula]

Looks like a cat and letters "H" and "B"? (stamped on the back of the plate).
A cat/lion seems popular on some colonial silver but I can't find this mark.
Thank you.

[dancula]

I found an identical mark (HB and a lion) on a silver tea caddy inscribed ‘Nadaraja Press, Colombo, Ceylon’ and thought to date from the 1920s.
I can find references to the Nadaraja Press in Colombo from the 1940s to 1970s, so it seems likely that it might be a local Colombo silversmith who also made the dish I am researching. In 1956 Appavoopillai Patchamuthuwent went to work for his uncle who had taken over the family’s printing company, the Nadaraja Press, started by his father, possibly in the 1920s.

So it seems the piece may have been made in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) not India. The stylized elephants also suggest a Ceylon origin.

[dognose]

Hi,

The lion does indeed possibly hold a sword:



Trev.

[dancula]

I don't believe so.. it looks like his 4 feet are on the ground.

[dancula]

These marks are on the 1920s tea caddy from Ceylon.