Rhine
— the river the mountains agree to let go.
Not only on a wall.
“The Austrian Rhine is short and decisive. The river enters Vorarlberg at Martinsbruck, gathers itself through the Rheintal between Feldkirch and Bregenz, and slides into the eastern shore of Lake Constance as a straight braided channel. Farmers know the floodplain by its corn. Walkers know it by the dyke paths that run for miles without turning.
Rhine, 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 Austrian stretch of the Rhine, called the Alpenrhein where it runs through the Alps, forms most of Vorarlberg's western border with Switzerland and Liechtenstein. The river enters Austria near Martinsbruck and reaches Lake Constance about 90 kilometres later, near Hard. Between Feldkirch and Bregenz the channel was straightened in the early twentieth century by the Rhine Regulation treaty of 1892 to stop the seasonal floods that once swallowed villages in the Rheintal. The water arrives cold and grey-green from the Hinterrhein and Vorderrhein sources in Graubünden.
The Alpenrhein carries roughly 230 cubic metres per second on average into Lake Constance, and considerably more in early summer when the snow comes off the Swiss massifs. The colour shifts month by month, pale glacial grey in May and June, clearer green by autumn, because the suspended rock flour drops out as the flow slows in the lower valley. The channel sits between two long dykes built and rebuilt over a century. Cyclists and walkers use the dyke paths as a near-flat route from Feldkirch to the lake.
Most travellers meet the Austrian Rhine at Bregenz, on the eastern shore of Lake Constance, where the river slides into the lake under the gaze of the Pfänder. Trains from Innsbruck and Zürich both reach Bregenz; from there a regional line runs south through Dornbirn and Feldkirch, shadowing the river. The dyke paths are open all year and free of charge. The river itself is not navigable for pleasure boats in this stretch; the appeal is the walk, the flat sky over the Rheintal, and the cattle pastures on the Swiss side.