A Pre-Columbian, Costa Rica, dark green jade pendant in the ...

Hammer

£90

A Pre-Columbian, Costa Rica, dark green jade pendant in the form of a turtle, 6cm long Found by the vendor's grandfather Charles Herbert Lankester (1879-1969), whilst farming for coffee in the Chachi and Las Concovas Cartago region, Costa Rica in the early 1900s. It is believed by the vendor that this item was brought to England before World War II. Charles Herbert Lankester (1879-1969) was a dominant figure of Central American orchidology. Better known as 'Don Carlos', Lankester was born in Southampton, England, on June 14 1879 he was offered a position to work as an assistant to the recently founded Sarapiquí Coffee Estates Company in Costa Rica. Many of the plants he saw and collected were new species. With no literature at his hand to determine the plants he collected, Lankester started corresponding with the assistant director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, Arthur Hill in 1910. He returned to England in 1920 to enrol his five children in English schools. Lankester travelled to Africa from 1920 to 1922, hired by the British Government to conduct research into coffee plantations in Uganda. In 1955, after his wife's death and already 76 years old, Lankester decided to sell his farm but retained the small part which contained his garden, a piece of land called ''El Silvestre''. Lankester moved to a house he had bought in Moravia, one of the suburbs of the capital, San José. On this farm, Lankester began his wonderful collections of orchids and other plants, which formed the basis of the Charles H. Lankester Botanical Garden of the University of Costa Rica.