Kashmir Valley
— — the valley the chinar trees turn red for.
Not only on a wall.
“A long oval of farmland and water at the foot of the Himalayas, ringed by the Pir Panjal on the south and the main range to the north. Srinagar sits at the centre, on the Jhelum, with the shikara boats moving slow across Dal Lake. In autumn the chinar trees in the Mughal gardens turn deep red, then bronze. In spring the saffron fields at Pampore go a short, bright violet. — from the studio
Kashmir Valley, 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 Kashmir Valley is a roughly oval intermontane basin in the union territory of Jammu and Kashmir, about 135 kilometres long and 32 wide. It sits at an average elevation near 1,585 metres, drained by the Jhelum River, and is held between the Pir Panjal range to the south and the main Himalayan range to the north and east. Srinagar, the summer capital, sits at the centre, on Dal Lake and the river. The valley has been settled continuously for at least two thousand years and was a centre of Sanskrit learning long before the Mughals reached it.
The Kashmiri year reads through its trees and its harvests. Almond blossom around Srinagar opens in March. The saffron of Pampore, southeast of the city, flowers for two to three weeks in late October on volcanic karewa terraces, the only commercial saffron crop in India. The chinar trees, planted in the Mughal gardens from the sixteenth century onward, turn red and then bronze through October and November. Winter brings snow to the floor of the valley and closes the higher passes into Ladakh.
Dal Lake covers about eighteen square kilometres on the northeastern edge of Srinagar, fed by springs and by the Telbal Nallah. Floating market gardens, the rad, sit on top of weed mats anchored to the lake bed. Shikara boats carry people and produce; cedar-and-deodar houseboats line the southern shore, a tradition that grew in the nineteenth century when the Dogra rulers restricted land sales to non-Kashmiris. The Mughal gardens of Shalimar Bagh and Nishat Bagh step down to the water on the eastern side.