Nanjing
— — a city that has been the capital and let it go.
Not only on a wall.
“The old southern capital, walled by the Ming and watched over by Purple Mountain. The Yangtze runs broad and slow on its western edge; Xuanwu Lake sits inside the wall on the north. Plane trees on Zhongshan Road, the long avenue Sun Yat-sen's funeral cortège once travelled. A city that has carried the title of capital under six dynasties and still keeps its quiet.
Nanjing, 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.
Nanjing sits on the south bank of the lower Yangtze River in Jiangsu province, about 300 kilometres up the river from Shanghai. The metropolitan population is roughly 9.5 million, with the historic walled core much smaller. The city served as the capital of China under six dynasties, most consequentially the early Ming from 1368 to 1421, and again under the Republic of China from 1927 to 1949. Purple Mountain rises to 448 metres on the eastern edge of the old wall.
The Ming city wall, begun in 1366 under the Hongwu Emperor, is the longest surviving city wall in the world, with about 25.1 kilometres of the original 35 still standing, faced in baked brick over a rammed-earth core. Each brick carries the name of the brickmaker and the county that supplied it, a quality-control system devised to make corruption traceable six centuries later. The Zhonghua Gate complex at the south wall holds four successive defensive courtyards and is the largest surviving city gate in China.
The four seasons are sharply marked. Plum-rain settles over the city through late June into mid-July, then summer heat builds toward August highs near 33°C. Autumn is the clearest season, with the plane trees along Zhongshan Road turning yellow through November and the maples on Purple Mountain reddening in early December. Winters are damp and cold, occasionally dipping below freezing. The cherry blossoms at Jiming Temple, set against the Ming wall, draw heavy crowds for two weeks in late March.