Torres del Paine National Park
— — three granite towers above a wind-scoured plain.
Not only on a wall.
“The southern Andes finish here, in a wedge of Chilean Patagonia between the Southern Ice Field and the Argentine steppe. Three granite towers rise above turquoise lakes the colour of glacial silt. The wind comes off the ice and runs unbroken across the pampa, bending the lenga trees on the ridges. The W trek follows the southern valleys; the longer O circuit closes around the back of the massif. — from the studio
Torres del Paine National Park, 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.
Torres del Paine National Park covers about 1,810 square kilometres in Chilean Patagonia, in Última Esperanza Province roughly 110 kilometres north of Puerto Natales. The park was established in 1959 and named a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 1978. Its central feature is the Cordillera del Paine, a small massif of granite and dark sedimentary rock that includes the three towers, the horned peaks of the Cuernos, and Paine Grande at 2,884 metres. The Southern Patagonian Ice Field forms the western boundary.
The park's silence is not stillness. The Patagonian wind, channelled off the Southern Ice Field, regularly gusts past 100 kilometres an hour in spring and summer, bending the lenga and ñirre forests permanently downwind. Between gusts the country is unusually quiet, with few human sounds beyond the refugios. Guanaco call from the open pampa. Condors ride the thermals above Cerro Paine Grande. Distant calving on Grey Glacier travels across the lake for kilometres before fading into the next gust.
The main season runs October through April, with the long summer days falling between December and February. The classic W trek covers about 80 kilometres in four to five days, linking the Towers base, the French Valley, and Grey Glacier. The longer O circuit closes around the back of the massif in seven to nine days and requires reservations through the refugio system, run by Vértice and Las Torres. Puerto Natales is the staging town; the nearest international airport is Punta Arenas, three hours south.