Copán
— — the stones that kept their faces.
Not only on a wall.
“A Classic Maya city in the Copán Valley, about fourteen kilometres from the Guatemalan border. The carving here is finer than almost anywhere else in the Maya world: portraits of named kings, a stairway with more than two thousand glyphs. The ceiba trees grew through it for a thousand years before the archaeologists came back.
Copán, 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.
Copán sits in the Copán Valley of western Honduras, near the town of Copán Ruinas in Copán Department, about fourteen kilometres from the Guatemalan border. The site occupies a fertile river terrace at roughly 600 metres elevation, on a southern tributary of the Río Motagua system. It marks the south-eastern edge of the Classic Maya world, flourishing between roughly the fifth and ninth centuries under a dynasty of sixteen kings founded by K'inich Yax K'uk' Mo'. UNESCO inscribed the ruins on the World Heritage List in 1980.
The carving at Copán is what sets it apart from other Maya cities. The local greenish volcanic tuff is soft enough to be cut deeply, and the sculptors here worked it in near-three-dimensional relief where most Maya centres kept to flat panels. The Hieroglyphic Stairway, commissioned by the thirteenth ruler in the early eighth century, carries more than 2,200 glyph blocks across sixty-three steps, the longest known Maya inscription. The portrait stelae of the king called 18 Rabbit stand in the Great Plaza.
The archaeological park lies a short walk from Copán Ruinas town, reached from San Pedro Sula by about three hours of road. Gates open daily, generally from eight in the morning to four in the afternoon, with separate tickets for the main site, the tunnels beneath the Acropolis, and the sculpture museum. Mornings are cooler and the scarlet macaws come down to feed near the entrance. The dry season runs from December through April; afternoon rain is common from May to October.