Cerrado
— — the savanna that drinks fire and answers green.
Not only on a wall.
“Brazil's vast tropical savanna, spread across the central plateau from Goiás to Tocantins to western Bahia. Twisted trees with thick corky bark hold the grasslands. The Cerrado is the second-largest biome in South America after the Amazon and one of the most biodiverse savannas on earth. Fire is part of the cycle; many of the woody plants depend on it to seed. The headwaters of the Araguaia, the Tocantins, and the São Francisco rivers begin in this ground.
Cerrado, 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 Cerrado is the tropical savanna biome of central Brazil, covering roughly two million square kilometres — about twenty-one percent of the country — across the states of Goiás, Tocantins, Mato Grosso, Mato Grosso do Sul, Minas Gerais, and parts of Bahia, Maranhão, and Piauí. Conservation International classifies it as one of the world's thirty-six biodiversity hotspots, with more than eleven thousand native plant species, around forty-five percent of them endemic. The Chapada dos Veadeiros and Emas national parks protect signature sections.
The Cerrado runs on a sharp two-season cycle: a wet summer from October to April and a long dry winter from May to September, when humidity drops below twenty percent in places. The woody flora is fire-adapted; many species have thick corky bark, deep taproots, and seeds that germinate after burning. Managed and natural fires are part of the system. WWF and INPE data have tracked accelerating clearance for soy and cattle, with more than half of the original biome now converted.
The Cerrado is the cradle of waters for much of South America: the headwaters of the Araguaia, the Tocantins, the São Francisco, and several Paraná-basin tributaries rise from springs across the plateau. Maned wolves, giant anteaters, and pampas deer move through the grasslands; the hyacinth macaw nests in the buriti palms along the gallery forests. UNESCO inscribed Chapada dos Veadeiros and Emas as a joint World Heritage Site in 2001 for these values.