Eluru
— — the town that has been weaving wool for four hundred years.
Not only on a wall.
“An old district town on the Tammileru in coastal Andhra Pradesh, about halfway between Vijayawada and Rajahmundry. Persian weavers brought the hand-knotted wool carpet here in the seventeenth century and the looms never stopped. Tank-fed rice fields run to the edge of the city. The afternoons are slow. In the carpet quarter, the warp is still strung between two iron pegs and a child counts the knots out loud.
Eluru, 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.
Eluru sits on the Tammileru River in coastal Andhra Pradesh, roughly midway between Vijayawada to the south and Rajahmundry to the northeast. It is the administrative seat of Eluru district, with a city population of around 250,000. The Eluru Canal, part of the Krishna delta irrigation system, runs through the city and has shaped its trade routes for two centuries. The Kolleru Lake wetland, one of India's largest freshwater lakes, lies a short drive to the southeast.
Eluru has been a centre of hand-knotted wool pile carpets for roughly four centuries. Tradition holds that Persian weavers settled here in the seventeenth century under local patronage and the craft has been passed within the same families ever since. The carpets carry a Geographical Indication tag from the Government of India. Floor looms still line the lanes of the old weaving quarters, where the warp is strung between two iron pegs and pattern is called out knot by knot.
Eluru is on the Howrah-Chennai main line and most express trains stop here; the journey from Vijayawada takes about an hour. National Highway 16 passes the city. The most settled months for travel are November through February, when daytime temperatures are mild and humidity drops. The carpet workshops in the older quarter receive visitors during working hours; the Kolleru Lake bird sanctuary, southeast of the city, is at its richest from October through March when migratory pelicans and painted storks arrive.