Jinan
— — the city the springs walk through.
Not only on a wall.
“Jinan is the capital of Shandong and the old City of Springs. More than seventy named springs surface inside the city walls, the most famous being Baotu, where three jets push up through a square pool at the centre of a Ming-era park. Beyond the springs the city opens onto Daming Lake, a freshwater lake fed entirely by the springs themselves. The poet Li Qingzhao was born here in 1084 and a small hall in the park keeps her memory. from the studio
Jinan, 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.
Jinan is the capital of Shandong Province in eastern China, a city of roughly 9.2 million on the southern bank of the Yellow River. It lies at the northern foot of the Taishan range, about 70 kilometres from the summit of sacred Mount Tai, and has been continuously inhabited since the Longshan culture of the third millennium BCE. The city's identity is bound to its karst springs: more than seventy named springs surface within the central districts, fed by the limestone aquifer running down from the mountains, and the city has carried the name Quancheng, City of Springs, since the Song dynasty.
Baotu Spring is the most celebrated of Jinan's springs and the centre of a Ming-era park first laid out in 1462. Three jets surge up through a square stone pool at flow rates that historically exceeded 240,000 cubic metres a day, though urban groundwater drawdown reduced the flow during the 1990s and required intervention to restore. Beyond Baotu, the Black Tiger, Pearl, and Five Dragon Pool spring groups feed canals through the old city and ultimately drain into Daming Lake, a freshwater lake of about 0.46 square kilometres at the northern edge of the historic centre.
The springs run year-round but they perform in winter. When the city air drops below freezing, the warmer spring water — held steady at about 18 degrees Celsius by the limestone aquifer — throws a continuous column of mist over the pools at Baotu and Five Dragon. Photographers come for that effect in January and February. The Daming Lake lotus bloom runs from late June through August. Li Qingzhao, the great Song-dynasty ci poet, was born in Jinan in 1084, and the memorial hall in her name sits on the lakeshore.