Winnowing Tray

In rice growing regions throughout rural Asia, one of the indispensable steps in preparing rice grains to cook and eat is to place the raw grains (dried for hours on mats in the hot, bright sunlight) in a woven winnowing tray and bounce that tray up and down vigorously to shake the grain casings off. Different ethnic societies have slightly different tray styles but all have a very consistent shape: a round, flat appearance with slightly raised edges. The Bhutanese style calls for an especially tight weave, which male plaiters take great pride in. Bhim Subba is well known in the Worcester Bhutanese artisan community for his painstaking work in cutting bamboo strips into precisely well-hewn measures. He sits cross-legged out in his sun porch to do this; he also uses that same technique of making carefully crafted bamboo strips in his basketry work.