Amritsar
— — gold on water, before the city wakes.
Not only on a wall.
“The Harmandir Sahib sits on a small island in a square tank of water, and the water is what makes the gold work. Before dawn the marble causeway is cool underfoot and the granthi's recitation comes through speakers tuned low. The langar kitchen has been running, in some form, since the sixteenth century, and still serves anyone who arrives, hungry or curious or both. The city around it — Amritsar, founded by the fourth Sikh guru in 1577 — is loud and ordinary and grows quiet at the steps. from the studio
Amritsar, 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.
Amritsar sits on the Punjab plain about 28 kilometres from the Wagah crossing into Pakistan, at an elevation near 234 metres. The city was founded in 1577 by Guru Ram Das, the fourth Sikh guru, around the tank that became the Amrit Sarovar. His successor Guru Arjan completed the temple at its centre in 1604 and installed the first copy of the Guru Granth Sahib there. The city is the principal religious centre of Sikhism and a major commercial hub of the Indian Punjab, with a metropolitan population above one million.
The temple keeps a slow daily rhythm and a louder annual one. The Guru Granth Sahib is carried into the sanctum each morning before dawn and returned to the Akal Takht at night, a ceremony called the palki sahib. Baisakhi in mid-April marks the 1699 founding of the Khalsa by Guru Gobind Singh and brings the largest crowds of the year. The langar — the community kitchen attached to the complex — serves a free vegetarian meal to an estimated 50,000 to 100,000 visitors a day, prepared and cleaned by volunteers in shifts.
The complex is open to visitors of any faith, day and night, with no admission fee. Heads must be covered, shoes left at the free deposit counter, and feet washed in the shallow trough at the entrance. Modest dress is expected; head-coverings are loaned at the gate. Photography is permitted in the outer parikrama but not inside the sanctum on the causeway. Jallianwala Bagh, the memorial to the 1919 massacre under General Dyer, is a short walk from the eastern entrance and worth the half hour.