Guruvayur Temple
— — the place Krishna is said to keep, and to be kept.
Not only on a wall.
“A Krishna temple in coastal Kerala that has drawn pilgrims for as long as anyone can document. The deity is Guruvayurappan, Krishna in his four-armed cosmic form. The temple opens before sunrise for the nirmalya darshan and closes only after the night puja. Outside its eastern gate, the temple elephants are kept at the Punnathur Kotta sanctuary. The air smells of jasmine, ghee lamps, and rain. from the studio
Guruvayur Temple, 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.
The Guruvayur Sri Krishna Temple stands in the town of Guruvayur in Thrissur district, Kerala, about 29 kilometres northwest of Thrissur city and inland from the Arabian Sea. It is among the most important Vaishnava pilgrimage sites in India and is sometimes called the Bhuloka Vaikuntha, or Vaikuntha on earth. The presiding deity, Guruvayurappan, is a four-armed form of Vishnu-Krishna. The 17th-century devotional poem Narayaneeyam, composed in 1587 by Melpathur Narayana Bhattathiri, is associated with the temple and is still recited there daily.
The temple opens around 3:00 a.m. for the nirmalya darshan, the first sight of the deity stripped of the previous night's flowers, and closes after the trippuka night puja near 9:30 p.m. Only practising Hindus are admitted past the gopuram, a rule that the temple administration enforces strictly. Men remove shirts inside the sanctum; women wear a sari or set-mundu. Cameras and phones are not permitted. The temple elephants are kept about three kilometres east at the Punnathur Kotta sanctuary, which is open to all visitors.
The Guruvayur calendar turns on a series of festivals tied to the Malayalam month. The ten-day Utsavam, set by the temple astrologer to begin on a Pushya nakshatra in Kumbham (February or March), ends with the Aarattu procession to the Rudratheertham tank. Ekadashi in the month of Vrischikam (November or December) is the most important single day, when Bhattathiri is said to have completed the Narayaneeyam. Janmashtami in Chingam marks Krishna's birth, and Vishu in Medam opens the Malayalam new year with the kani at dawn.