Inn
— the colour the glaciers send east.
Not only on a wall.
“A river that begins above the Engadin in eastern Switzerland and reaches the Danube at Passau, more than five hundred kilometres on. Most of its run lies in Austria, through Tyrol, past Innsbruck, the city named for the bridge across it. The water carries glacial silt from the Ötztal and the Karwendel and runs a pale jade under cloud, slate-green under sun.
Inn, 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 Inn rises near the Maloja Pass in the Swiss Engadin and flows roughly 518 kilometres east and north, joining the Danube at the German city of Passau. Around 280 kilometres of its course run through Austria, almost entirely in Tyrol. The valley cuts between the Karwendel Alps to the north and the Stubai and Tuxer ranges to the south. Innsbruck, the regional capital, takes its name from the river: Innsbruck means bridge over the Inn, and the city sits where the Sill joins from the south.
The Inn carries meltwater from glaciers in the Ötztal, the Stubai, and the Zillertal, plus the Karwendel's spring runoff. Suspended rock flour gives it the pale jade colour it holds through Tyrol, deepening to slate where tributaries enter. Volume peaks in June and July when the high glaciers are running hard; the river is at its clearest in early winter, when frost locks the upper basins. At Passau, the Inn meets the Danube carrying roughly the same flow as the larger-named river.
Spring runs the river hard with snowmelt from late April through June. Summer holds the peak glacial discharge, and the jade is most saturated in July. By October the alpine valleys start to drain and the water clears. Winter freezes the upper reaches in the Engadin and the Ötztal; the lower Tyrolean stretch keeps moving past Innsbruck even when the surrounding ground is white. The river runs in one steady direction through every season: east to the Danube, then on to the Black Sea.