Okavango Delta
— — a river that doesn't find the sea.
Not only on a wall.
“A river ends without reaching the ocean. The Okavango falls out of the Angolan highlands, crosses the Caprivi panhandle, and spills into the Kalahari sands of northern Botswana, where it spreads across roughly 15,000 square kilometres of seasonal floodplain. The annual flood arrives in the local dry months from June onward. Elephants walk through water up to their bellies. The mokoro, a hand-carved dugout, is still the way most people move through the channels.
Okavango Delta, 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 Okavango Delta is an inland alluvial fan in northern Botswana, where the Okavango River, having travelled about 1,600 km from the Angolan highlands, ends in the Kalahari sands without reaching any sea. It covers between 6,000 and 15,000 square kilometres depending on the season, expanding with the annual flood that arrives between June and August. UNESCO inscribed it as a World Heritage site on 22 June 2014, the 1,000th property added to the list. Maun, on the southeastern edge of the fan, is the main air gateway for camps inside the Delta.
The flood that defines the Delta begins in the Angolan highlands during the southern summer rains and takes around five months to traverse the Caprivi panhandle and reach Maun, arriving when northern Botswana itself is in the dry season. The water spreads through a fan of channels and seasonal floodplains that shift year by year as papyrus thickets and hippo paths re-route the flow. Mean depth in the main channels is typically less than two metres, which is what makes the mokoro, a slender dugout canoe, the natural craft for moving between island camps.
The flood peak runs from roughly July to September, which is also the cool dry season and the best window for game viewing as wildlife concentrates on the islands and channels left between the floodwaters. By October the water has receded and temperatures climb above 40°C across the surrounding sandveld. The Delta supports large populations of African elephant, hippopotamus, and lechwe, and one of the continent's largest remaining populations of the endangered African wild dog. Bird records exceed 480 species, including the African fish eagle, the wattled crane, and Pel's fishing owl.