Title: Opening Cacao Fruits - Jamaica.
Artist: The Philadelphia Museum
Silver gelatin photograph, 1910s.
Image size 9 1/2 x 12" (241 x 304 mm).

Cocoa and chocolate are made from the seeds of a small tree (Theobroma cacao, Sterculiaceae) which grows in the tropics. This picture shows one of the trees with a few fruits hanging on the large branches. Black women seated under the tree are opening the fruits. They cut them with large knives, called "machetes", and take out the seeds together with the pulp in which they are imbedded. This is seen in the baskets on the ground. The seeds with the pulp surrounding them are left lying for a few days so that the pulp ferments or partly decays. Then the pulp is washed away. The clean seeds, each of which is perhaps an inch long, and three-eighths of an inch thick, are dried, usually in the sun, but sometimes by artificial heat. Cacao beans are roasted, ground to a powder, and made into cakes to form chocolate. For sweet chocolate, sugar and vanilla are added. Cacao beans are rich in a fatty oil which is partly removed when cocoa powder is manufactured. Cacao beans are cultivated in most tropical countries. The principal exporting countries are Ecuador, Venezuela, and Trinidad. The picture shows two other negro women standing under a young banana tree, with large baskets on their heads, filled with cacao fruits. These they have just brought from near-by trees to be opened. This fashion of carrying things on the head is common to negroes in almost all countries. Black women often tie a cloth around the head, like those in the picture.

Condition: Very good condtion, some minor surface staining on back of photo board.