Bonnieux Perched Village
— — stone the colour of late afternoon.
Not only on a wall.
“One of the perched villages of the Luberon, on the north slope of the massif. The houses stack up the hillside in pale Provençal stone, ending at a small 12th-century church set among cedars at the summit. The road from Cavaillon climbs through vines and orchards to reach it. Late afternoon is the village's hour. The stone takes a colour that doesn't quite belong to any other time of day. Across the valley, Lacoste sits on its own hill with the half-ruined château of Sade above the rooftops.
Bonnieux Perched Village, 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.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
The place, in three passes.
Bonnieux is a commune in the Vaucluse department of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, on the north slope of the Luberon massif. The village climbs the hillside in tiers between roughly 300 and 425 metres elevation, with the 12th-century Église Haute set at the summit beside a stand of Atlas cedars. The commune sits within the Luberon Regional Natural Park, established in 1977 and recognised by UNESCO as a biosphere reserve. The D36 connects Bonnieux to Apt, about eleven kilometres to the north, and to Lourmarin on the south side of the massif. Across the valley to the west, Lacoste rises on its own hill with the ruined château of the Marquis de Sade above the rooftops. The commune counts roughly 1,400 residents.
The houses of Bonnieux are built from local Luberon limestone, a pale calcareous stone quarried for centuries in the surrounding valleys. The colour shifts with the hour: cream at midday, honey in late afternoon, deeper amber at the end of the day. The village climbs in tiered terraces along the hillside, with stepped lanes and stone vaulting connecting one level to the next. At the summit, the Église Haute dates to the 12th century and served as the parish church until 1870, when a new church was built lower in the village beside the main road. A walled cemetery beside the old church holds graves several hundred years old. Northwest of the village, the Roman Pont Julien crosses the Calavon on three arches, in place since around 3 BC.
The Luberon sits under what generations of French painters have called the lumière de Provence, a high, dry southern light that reads as gold in the late afternoon and rose at sunset. Cézanne worked under it near Aix, south of the massif; Van Gogh painted under it at Saint-Rémy and Arles, west, in the Alpilles. The mistral wind, blowing down the Rhône valley from the north for around a hundred days a year, scours the air to a clarity that flattens distance and saturates colour. From the summit of the village, the view runs across the Calavon valley to Mont Ventoux, fifty kilometres to the north, its limestone summit holding light long after the village below has gone into shadow. The Atlas cedars planted above the village in 1862 stand dark against that light.