Photo
Alice Huger Ravenel Smith painted a number of watercolor scenes of the rice cultivation process in the Lowcountry at the turn of the 20th century. The process had not changed substantially since it...
Photo
Plowing rice. Engraving from "Harper's New Monthly Magazine," November 1878. Courtesy of the South Carolina Department of Archives and History.
Photo
A stereograph card shows hoeing rice "the old way." Hoe culture was the predominant method of working the soil in traditional agricultural societies, and was only slowly replaced by the use of mule...
Photo
Flooding a rice field at high tide. From Keystone View Company stereograph card, around 1890. Courtesy of the South Caroliniana Library.
Photo
A watercolor by Alice Huger Ravenel Smith of workers flooding the rice fields. Courtesy of the Gibbes Museum of Art/Carolina Art Association.
Photo
"A rice raft with plantation hands, near Georgetown." From a Keystone View Company stereograph card, around 1890. Courtesy of the South Caroliniana Library.
Photo
Harvesting rice, using modern methods and a tractor. Photo by Stan Lewis, around 1950. Courtesy of the South Carolina Department of Archives and History.
Photo
Winnowing rice with a fanner basket near Beaufort, in 1907. The sweet grass baskets now sold as decorative items in Charleston area open air markets were originally essential pieces of home and field...
Photo
Winnowing house on the Mansfield Plantation in Georgetown County. Rice was brought into the upper story of the winnowing house, and was slowly sifted through a hole in the floor. As the heavier...
Photo
Workers on the Hobcaw Barony plantation around 1900 are "pounding rice the hard way," according to the caption. This pounding system is African in origin. The blows loosen the husks from the rice...