Wulingyuan
— — the morning the mist forgets to lift.
Not only on a wall.
“A forest of quartz sandstone pillars in northern Hunan, three thousand of them, some standing more than two hundred metres above the valley floor. The mist comes up through the columns most mornings and stays until late, so the rock reads less as cliff than as ink wash. The trail system threads from glass walkways at the top down to the streams of Suoxi Valley, where macaques outnumber the visitors who make it that far. from the studio
Wulingyuan, 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.
Wulingyuan is a scenic and historic interest area in northern Hunan Province, China, covering about 264 square kilometres of the Wuling mountain range. It was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1992 for its dense field of quartz sandstone pillars and the deep ravines between them. The area is administered as part of Zhangjiajie prefecture-level city and groups together Zhangjiajie National Forest Park, Suoxi Valley, Tianzi Mountain, and Yangjiajie. More than three thousand pillars rise from the valley floor, some exceeding 200 metres in height.
The pillars are quartz sandstone, formed from the Devonian-period sediments laid down roughly 380 million years ago and exposed by long erosion of the surrounding plateau. Vertical jointing in the rock, combined with the work of running water and freeze–thaw cycles, has stripped the softer material away and left near-vertical columns standing alone. The tallest, Qianli Xiangchang, exceeds 320 metres. The peak called Hallelujah Mountain, formerly known as Southern Sky Column, was officially renamed in 2010 after serving as a visual reference for the floating mountains in the film Avatar.
Wulingyuan is reached by air through Zhangjiajie Hehua International Airport, by high-speed rail to Zhangjiajie West Station, and by road from Changsha in about four hours. Within the scenic area, the Bailong Elevator climbs 326 metres up the cliff face in under two minutes, and a cable car runs up Tianzi Mountain. April through June and September through November are the standard windows, with daytime temperatures around 15 to 25°C. Summer is hot and humid; winter brings cold rain and occasional snow on the higher ridges.