Danube
— — the river that never quite turns blue.
Not only on a wall.
“In the sixty-kilometre stretch between Melk and Krems the river slows and the hills come close. Vineyards step down to the water on terraces older than the abbey above them. Apricot orchards line the towns. Strauss wrote a waltz about the colour; the river itself is usually green, sometimes silver, blue only when the light cooperates.
Danube, 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 Danube is Europe's second-longest river, running roughly 2,850 kilometres from the Black Forest to the Black Sea. In Austria it crosses about 350 kilometres of country, threading the Wachau Valley between Melk and Krems before reaching Vienna. The Wachau was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage cultural landscape in 2000, recognising vineyards and orchards worked continuously since the early Middle Ages. Melk Abbey, the Benedictine monastery on the cliff above the bend, was founded in 1089 and rebuilt in baroque form by Jakob Prandtauer between 1702 and 1736.
Melk Abbey's baroque facade rises about ninety metres above the river on a granite spur, the present structure raised between 1702 and 1736 by Jakob Prandtauer. Downstream at Dürnstein, the ruined castle on the hill held Richard the Lionheart captive through the winter of 1192-93 on his way home from the Third Crusade. The town's blue-and-white Augustinian church tower marks the curve where the river narrows and the vineyards climb steepest. Limestone bedrock and Gföhl gneiss hold the terraces in place.
The Wachau wine harvest runs from late September into October — Grüner Veltliner first, Riesling later from the steepest terraces. Apricot blossom comes in early April, the Wachauer Marille protected by EU designation since 1996. From May the riverboats run the Melk-to-Krems stretch as a half-day cruise. Winter empties the valley, the vineyard rows standing bare against the limestone, and the river runs grey under a low sun until the spring melt brings the level back up.