Punkahs brought climate control into the American South from early on, using enslaved peoples to laboriously fan plantation owners in the summer heat.
The Spatiotemporal Microclimates/Microbreezes of the Punkah in the Plantation Landscape
During the Antebellum era, enslaved workers manually operated the Southern plantation punkahs by pulling a cord back-and-forth, creating an interior breeze to combat the heat and control the insects during mealtimes. Dana E. Byrd of the Punkah Project describes how “in many elite Southern homes, punkahs […] were an integral part of the architecture of the dining room in the antebellum United States. Paralleling their relationship to American slavery was their use in British India, where the fans had a long history of being powered by low-caste workers.” Two Breezes: The Spatiotemporal Microclimates/Microbreezes of the Punkah in the Plantation Landscape investigates the plantation punkahs in Natchez, Mississippi. These architectural mutations arising out of the plantation complex create an entangled set of relationships between laboring bodies, climate, and architecture.