Cumilla
— — a thousand years of brick beneath the rice.
Not only on a wall.
“An old city of the Bengal plain, about a hundred kilometres southeast of Dhaka. The rice country runs flat in every direction, broken by mango groves and the low red ridge of Mainamati, where Buddhist monasteries stood from the seventh century. The market is loud, the sweets are famous — rasmalai from this town carries across all of Bangladesh — and the rains come heavy from June into September. from the studio
Cumilla, 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.
Cumilla, formerly anglicised as Comilla, is a city in eastern Bangladesh and the seat of Cumilla District within Chattogram Division. It sits roughly 100 kilometres southeast of Dhaka on the plain between the Gumti and Meghna rivers, close to the Indian state of Tripura. The metropolitan area has a population of around 400,000, with the wider district above six million. The name is a colonial corruption of Kumilla, itself from the older kingdom of Tripura. The official spelling reverted to Cumilla in 2018.
Eight kilometres west of the city, the low ridge of Mainamati holds one of South Asia's most important Buddhist archaeological landscapes. Excavations have uncovered more than fifty sites of monasteries, stupas, and temples built in fired brick between the seventh and twelfth centuries under the Deva and Chandra dynasties. The largest, Shalban Vihara, is a roughly 167-metre-square monastery with 115 cells around a central cruciform temple. The Mainamati Museum on the ridge holds bronzes, terracotta plaques, and copperplate inscriptions recovered from the excavations.
Cumilla is reached by road from Dhaka along the N1 highway, a journey of about three hours by car, and by rail on the Dhaka–Chattogram line. The monsoon runs June through September, with the heaviest rain in July and August. Mainamati and Shalban Vihara are open daily and reachable by short rickshaw or CNG ride from the city centre. Matri Bhandar on Monoharpur Road has sold the city's signature rasmalai since 1930, and the sweet is the standard reason locals send a box back with visitors.