What is a Rice Bed or Rice Carved Bed?

In the 1850s rice was a major crop in the south. Carolina Gold rice was shipped back to Europe.

Wealthy rice planters had these four-poster beds carved with intricate sheaves of rice.

The earliest Rice Carved Bed was commissioned in 1750 by a wealthy North Carolina landowner. He ordered several items of furniture with rice sheaf carvings as a symbol of his wealth. Master craftsman Thomas Elfe, a cabinet maker in Charleston South Carolina, designed this intricately carved timeless motif for his furniture and it became a popular style throughout the South.

Thomas Elfe

Elfe was born in 1719 in London, England. He was an accomplished and prolific furniture and cabinet craftsman of the American colonial period. Elfe, a contemporary of Thomas Chippendale, was considered Charleston’s best furniture craftsman of the eighteenth century. His working career spanned almost thirty years from about 1746 to 1775. At one point in his career his personal worth was a fortune of over 6,200 English pounds. Local Charleston historian and one time director of the Charleston Museum, E. Milby Burton (1889–1977), attributed Elfe as the craftsman of some of the finest nationally acclaimed furniture produced. Burton’s research of Charleston furniture craftsmen revealed Elfe as the most successful and famous furniture craftsman in the eighteenth century.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Elfe

Antique Rice Beds are usually carved of mahogany or cherry. They have a high head board and a low footboard. This was a popular shape in the south. A low foot board allowed air circulation in hot southern rooms. The four posts are elaborately carved.

Some Rice Beds have carvings of tobacco plants, leaves or sheaves for wealthy tobacco planters. For some reason these are still called Rice Carved Beds.