Elbe
— — a river that starts as a meadow and ends in the North Sea.
Not only on a wall.
“The Czechs call it the Labe. It begins at 1,387 metres in a peat meadow on the Krkonoše plateau, runs south through Bohemia past Hradec Králové and Pardubice, gathers the Vltava at Mělník, and turns north toward Germany at Děčín. A thousand kilometres later it reaches Hamburg. This is the first kilometre. — from the studio
Elbe, 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.
The Elbe, known in Czech as the Labe, rises on the Labská louka — a high peat meadow at about 1,387 metres in the Krkonoše Mountains of northern Bohemia, near the Polish border. From the symbolic stone source it runs 1,094 kilometres south through the Czech Republic and then north through Germany, draining roughly 148,000 square kilometres before emptying into the North Sea at Cuxhaven. It is the fourth-longest river in Central Europe and the spine of Bohemia's history.
The river leaves the meadow as a stream barely wide enough to step across, then drops 50 metres over the Labský vodopád waterfall into the Labský důl glacial cirque. By the time it reaches Špindlerův Mlýn, the first town downstream, it is already a working river. The Elbe Sandstone Mountains downstream cut a dramatic gorge near Děčín before the river crosses into Saxony. The water is dark, peaty, and cold near the source; the colour shifts the further south it runs.
The source sits inside Krkonoše National Park, the oldest national park in the Czech Republic, established in 1963. The symbolic stone circle marking the spring is reachable on foot from Špindlerův Mlýn via the Labská bouda mountain hut, a walk of about two hours one way. The plateau is fragile alpine tundra; visitors are kept to boardwalks. Winter closes much of the high trail network. Best months are late June through September.