Picture Details
A sugar press
Partner:
British LibraryImage reference:
BL.Add.Or.89Origin:
IndiaArtist / Date:
Unknown, 1815-1820Description:
Click here for more details
Sugar cane is a giant, thick and perennial grass which grows in clumps of solid stalks in tropical and sub-tropical climes and has graceful, long, sword-like leaves. Cultivated in India since ancient times, it was discovered here by Alexander in the fourth century BC. Sugarcane juice was exported through the Classical World and used as a sweetener like honey. By the third century AD, the technology for making sugar by pressing out the cane juice and boiling it down into crystals was developed in India. The use of cane sugar became widespread in Persia and from here entered the Arab world and thence through Spain to Europe. The juice is squeezed from the stalks by pressing with heavy rollers and then the resulting greenish syrup is boiled with milk of lime that results in sugar crystals separating from the syrup, which becomes molasses. The left-over pulp is bagasse from which paper is made. In this painting, a bullock is helping to turn the sugarcane press which the central man is feeding with sugar cane.
