Funen
— — the orchard the country keeps for itself.
Not only on a wall.
“Denmark's middle island, the one called the garden. Odense at the centre, half-timbered villages along the lanes, manor houses and a Renaissance water castle at Egeskov, the long span of the Great Belt Bridge linking it to Zealand since 1998. From the studio, we see an island flatter than the Jutland heath, threaded with apple orchards and the quiet that comes off the Little Belt at evening.
Funen, 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.
Funen (Danish: Fyn) is Denmark's third-largest island, about 3,100 square kilometres in area, lying between the Jutland peninsula to the west and Zealand to the east. Its largest city is Odense, population around 180,000, the birthplace of Hans Christian Andersen in 1805. The Great Belt Bridge, opened in 1998, carries road and rail to Zealand; the Little Belt Bridge has linked Funen to Jutland since 1935. Around 460,000 people live on the island, most of them along the coasts and the central rail line that crosses from Nyborg to Middelfart.
Funen is called Denmark's garden for a reason: its glacial soils and mild maritime climate give it a longer fruit-ripening season than most of the country, and apple, pear, and cherry orchards still hold a visible share of the working landscape. Egeskov Castle, a Renaissance water castle completed in 1554 near Kværndrup, anchors a calendar of garden events from May to October. Andersen's birthday on 2 April fills Odense with readings, and the H. C. Andersen House museum reopened in a new Kengo Kuma building in 2021.
Odense is reachable by direct trains from Copenhagen in about ninety minutes across the Great Belt. The H. C. Andersen House, the cobbled lanes of the old quarter, and the new Andersen-inspired underground museum are concentrated in the city centre. Egeskov Castle lies thirty kilometres south and rewards a full day. The southern archipelago of Tåsinge, Langeland, and Ærø is reached by short bridges and ferries, and is the part of Funen most worth a slow week in summer.