Akola
— — the city the cotton trade built on the dry plain.
Not only on a wall.
“Akola sits on the flat black-soil plain of Vidarbha, in the eastern half of Maharashtra, on the road between Mumbai and Nagpur. The Morna River runs past it; the cotton fields run around it. It has been a market town for centuries, and the fort the Mughal-era governor Asad Khan raised still stands on the bank, low and square and stubborn. A working agricultural city under a high white sky, hot in the long summer, green for the few weeks of monsoon, and quiet on the back lanes where the old wooden balconies still lean over the street.
Akola, 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.
Akola is a city in the Vidarbha region of eastern Maharashtra, on the Morna River and on the main rail and road line between Mumbai and Nagpur. It is the headquarters of Akola District and one of the principal cotton-trading centres of central India, with a population of around 540,000 at the 2011 census. The surrounding plain is black-cotton soil, fed by the Purna river system, and the city sits at about 280 metres above sea level. The climate is hot semi-arid; summer temperatures regularly cross 45 degrees Celsius.
Akola's working year still turns on cotton. The kharif sowing follows the southwest monsoon in June and July; harvest runs from October into January, and the city's market yards handle a large share of Vidarbha's crop. The Akola Agricultural Produce Market Committee is one of the largest cotton mandis in Maharashtra. Dr Panjabrao Deshmukh Krishi Vidyapeeth, founded in Akola in 1969, is the state agricultural university for the Vidarbha region and runs research stations across the cotton belt. The annual Akoli Devi fair draws pilgrims to the city in March.
Asadgad, the old fort on the bank of the Morna at the western edge of the city, was built around 1697 by Asad Khan, a governor under the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb, and gives Akola one of its older names. About 60 kilometres south, in the Satpura hills, the much larger Narnala Fort spreads across three connected hill forts above the Melghat Tiger Reserve. The Balapur Fort, about 25 kilometres west of the city, was built by Azam Shah in 1721 and stands at the meeting of the Mann and Mhais rivers. The stone work in all three is dressed basalt and trap rock.