Krefeld
— — the soft sheen of silk under a grey northern sky.
Not only on a wall.
“A Rhineland city of about 227,000, long known as the city of silk and velvet. Looms ran here for three hundred years; the trade built the brick warehouses along the Westwall and the wide boulevards that ring the old town. Mies van der Rohe left two houses on Wilhelmshofallee, built in 1928 for two silk-mill directors and still open to walk through. Burg Linn rises moated and intact at the eastern edge. The Rhine slides past on the west, slow and brown, carrying the same river traffic it has for centuries. — from the studio
Krefeld, 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.
Krefeld sits on the left bank of the lower Rhine in North Rhine-Westphalia, about 20 kilometres northwest of Düsseldorf and 70 kilometres north of Cologne, with a population near 227,000. The city was raised to municipal rights in 1373 and grew wealthy from the late 17th century onward as a centre of silk weaving, protected first by the Princes of Orange and later by Prussian patents that allowed Mennonite weavers to settle. By 1900 it held more than 25,000 looms. The grid of the inner town, laid out around four wide axial streets meeting at the Ostwall, dates from that era.
Two houses on Wilhelmshofallee anchor any architectural visit. Haus Lange and Haus Esters were designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe in 1928 for the silk-mill directors Hermann Lange and Josef Esters, completed in brick in 1930. Both now operate as municipal contemporary-art galleries under the Kunstmuseen Krefeld. At the eastern edge of the city, Burg Linn holds a 12th-century moated castle and a 16th-century hunting lodge, set in the Linn village that still keeps its cobbled lanes. The Kaiser Wilhelm Museum in the centre, founded 1897, was the first municipal art museum in the German Empire.
The Deutsches Textilmuseum on Andreasmarkt holds one of Europe's most important historical textile collections, with about 30,000 objects spanning Coptic Egypt through 20th-century European haute couture, growing directly from the silk trade. The Niederrheinischer Reitturnier, held in the Stadtwald each summer since 1947, is one of the larger equestrian tournaments in Germany. The city also keeps Pferderennbahn Krefeld, the only thoroughbred track on the lower Rhine, running its main meeting on the last Sunday in May. The Karneval procession on Veilchendienstag, the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday, draws crowds from across the Rheinland.