Saskatoon
— — seven bridges over one slow river.
Not only on a wall.
“A prairie city the river cuts in two. Locals call it the Paris of the Prairies for the bridges, and the name has stuck since at least 1908. The riverbank trail runs both sides for kilometres past the Bessborough hotel, the Remai Modern, and the Persephone Theatre. Out at Wanuskewin, the prairie still does what it has done for six thousand years. from the studio
Saskatoon, 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.
Saskatoon sits on the South Saskatchewan River in the central prairies of Saskatchewan, about 250 kilometres north of Regina. The 2021 census recorded a city population of 266,141 and a metropolitan area of about 317,000, making it the largest city in the province. It was founded in 1882 as the headquarters of a Methodist temperance colony from Ontario and named for the Cree word misâskwatômina, the prairie berry that grows along the river. The two banks were joined into one city in 1906.
The Delta Bessborough hotel, opened in 1935 and built by Canadian National Railway in the château style, anchors the downtown skyline above the river. Across the water, the Remai Modern opened in 2017 with the world's largest public collection of Picasso linocuts, 405 works donated by Ellen Remai. The University of Saskatchewan, founded in 1907, sits a kilometre upriver and houses the Canadian Light Source, the country's only synchrotron. Seven bridges cross the river inside the city, which gave Saskatoon its nickname.
Wanuskewin Heritage Park, five kilometres north of the city, holds archaeological evidence of Northern Plains Indigenous life going back about 6,400 years, longer than the pyramids at Giza. The site was nominated to UNESCO's tentative World Heritage list in 2017 and a herd of plains bison was returned to the grasslands in 2019 after more than a century's absence. The Meewasin Valley Trail follows the river for roughly 90 kilometres through the city and out toward the park, mostly quiet, mostly cottonwood and saskatoon berry.