Provence Sunflower Field
— a thousand heads, all facing east.
Not only on a wall.
“The Valensole Plateau in late July, when the lavender rows give way to sunflower rows and both crops are at their height. The young plants follow the sun through the day; by the time the heads are heavy with seed, they hold east and don't move. Growers harvest in August for oilseed, and the colour lasts only a few weeks. Van Gogh painted his Sunflowers around Arles in 1888, two hours southwest. The light here hasn't changed.
Provence Sunflower Field, 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.
The Valensole Plateau spreads across about 800 square kilometers in Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, the eastern département of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region. The plateau sits at roughly 500 to 600 meters of elevation, bordered to the south by the Verdon Gorge and to the north by the Durance River. The town of Valensole, population near 3,300, gives the plateau its name and anchors a working agricultural landscape of lavender, almonds, and sunflowers. The closest international airport is Marseille Provence, about ninety minutes by car, and the plateau is reached most often via the D6 from Manosque or the D952 from the Verdon.
The sunflower bloom on the Valensole Plateau is brief, usually peaking between late June and the third week of July and sometimes holding into early August. The window lasts about three weeks in a typical summer. It overlaps the lavender harvest, which is why the plateau in July reads as gold and violet at once. Growers plant for oilseed rather than tourism, so the rows are functional and the heads are cut in August once the seeds dry. The crop rotates with wheat and lavender, so the same field is rarely yellow two summers in a row.
The light over Provence is the reason the painters came. Vincent van Gogh moved to Arles in February 1888, two hours southwest of the Valensole Plateau, and painted four major Sunflowers canvases that summer for the bedroom he was preparing for Paul Gauguin. He wrote to his brother Theo that he was trying to catch the yellow, the way the Provençal sun falls on the fields after noon. The plateau receives more than 2,800 hours of sunshine each year, among the highest in mainland France, and the air is dry enough that the colour does not soften across distance.