Brilon
— — a small town that owns a very large forest.
Not only on a wall.
“A Hanseatic town on the high plateau of the Sauerland, in the green middle of Germany. Brilon owns one of the largest municipal forests in the country, and the streets carry that forest in toward the marketplace. The Petruskirche has stood through eight hundred years of weather. The Möhne rises a few minutes' walk from the town.
Brilon, 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.
Brilon is a town of about 25,000 in the Hochsauerlandkreis, in the south-east corner of North Rhine-Westphalia, at roughly 455 metres on the Briloner Hochfläche limestone plateau. It received town rights in the thirteenth century and was a member of the Hanseatic League, an inland Hansa town trading in metals and timber. The river Möhne rises within the town boundary, in a small spring on the southern edge of the historic core.
The town owns the Briloner Stadtwald, around 7,750 hectares — among the largest municipal forests in Germany. Spruce, beech, and oak run unbroken from the edge of town out across the plateau. The Rothaarsteig long-distance trail passes nearby, and the local Briloner Kammweg traces the high ground above the Möhne. Walkers go for hours without crossing a road. After the 2018 storms and the bark-beetle years that followed, replanting in mixed broadleaf is well under way.
The Marktplatz holds the Propsteikirche St Petrus und Andreas, a Romanesque-Gothic basilica whose oldest fabric dates to the late twelfth century, beside the historic Rathaus, one of the oldest town halls in Westphalia still in continuous administrative use. The old town reads as a Hanseatic stone-and-half-timber set piece — slate roofs, narrow lanes, the limestone of the plateau visible in foundations and church walls. Walking the Petrus, the Rathaus, and the market in one loop takes under twenty minutes.