Tampere
— — the rapids that ran the mills, still running through town.
Not only on a wall.
“Tampere sits on a narrow isthmus between two lakes, Näsijärvi to the north and Pyhäjärvi to the south, with the Tammerkoski rapids dropping eighteen metres between them through the centre of town. The rapids ran the cotton and paper mills for nearly two centuries. The red-brick Finlayson works still stand on the west bank, refitted as cinemas and small workshops. Above the city, the Pispala ridge holds wooden houses painted ochre and dark red. — from the studio
Tampere, 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.
Tampere is the third-largest city in Finland and the largest inland city in the Nordic countries, with about two hundred fifty-five thousand residents. It sits on a narrow isthmus in the region of Pirkanmaa, roughly one hundred eighty kilometres north of Helsinki by rail. Two large lakes meet at its centre: Näsijärvi to the north and Pyhäjärvi to the south, joined by the Tammerkoski rapids, which drop about eighteen metres over less than a kilometre. The city was founded by King Gustav III of Sweden in 1779, and grew industrially in the nineteenth century around the water power of those rapids.
The Finlayson cotton mill, founded on the west bank of the Tammerkoski in 1820 by the Scottish industrialist James Finlayson, was for decades the largest employer in the Nordics, employing around three thousand workers by the 1870s. Its red-brick halls and chimney still define the riverfront, now refitted as cinemas, small workshops, the Finnish Labour Museum Werstas, and the Moomin Museum. Across the rapids, the Frenckell paper mill, in operation since 1783, was Finland's oldest industrial site. Tampere Cathedral, built in 1907 from grey granite to designs by Lars Sonck, holds Hugo Simberg's frescoes including the Wounded Angel.
Tampere holds four hard seasons. Summer is short, light, and lake-shaped: the SS Tarjanne, in service since 1908, still runs scheduled steamer trips north up Näsijärvi to Virrat. Autumn turns the birches along the rapids gold by late September. Winter freezes the bays solid; the Rajaportti sauna in Pispala, opened in 1906 and the oldest public sauna in Finland still in operation, runs steam against minus twenty Celsius outside. Spring breaks late and quickly, the ice gone from Pyhäjärvi by early May and the white nights pulling daylight close to twenty hours by midsummer.