Aras River
— — the river four countries learned to share.
Not only on a wall.
“The river the Armenians have always called Araks, running west to east along the country's southern edge before turning to meet the Kura. For long stretches it is the border itself, with Turkey and Iran on the far bank. Cliffs of red and grey rise above the water near Khor Virap, where the monastery looks across the river at Mount Ararat. The current runs steady year round. — from the studio
Aras River, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The Aras River, called Araks in Armenian and Aras in Turkish and Persian, runs roughly 1,072 kilometres from its sources in the eastern Anatolian highlands to its confluence with the Kura River in the Aras-Kura lowland of Azerbaijan. Along the way it forms long stretches of international boundary: Turkey and Armenia, then Iran and Armenia, then Iran and Azerbaijan. The river drains a basin of about 102,000 square kilometres. In Armenia it flows past the Ararat plain, with Mount Ararat itself visible across the river in Turkish territory.
The Aras carries one of the heavier sediment loads in the Caucasus, draining the volcanic uplands of eastern Turkey and the slopes of the southern Armenian highland. Mean annual discharge at the mouth is roughly 285 cubic metres per second. Several dams now sit along its course, including the joint Armenia-Iran Aras hydroelectric scheme near Meghri and the older Aras Dam at the Turkey-Armenia frontier, opened in 1971. The Khor Virap monastery, founded in the seventh century above the north bank, looks directly across the river at Mount Ararat, a view of one country from another.
The Armenian bank of the Aras is one of the quieter corners of the country. Border fencing keeps most of the river itself out of reach on foot, and the road south from Yerevan toward Meghri runs above the canyon for long stretches. The river is named in the Bible as the Araxes and appears in Strabo's Geography and in Persian and Armenian literature continuously since. Place names along the bank, from Yeraskh to Areni to Agarak, carry the river's older forms. The current does not hurry.