Kochi
— — the harbour the spice ships kept finding their way back to.
Not only on a wall.
“Portuguese, then Dutch, then British, then the long Kerala century that absorbed all three and stayed itself. The Chinese fishing nets along the Fort Kochi shore have been counterweighted in the same teak frame since the fourteenth century. The old synagogue in Jew Town still keeps its blue Cantonese floor tiles, and St Francis Church still carries the empty stone where Vasco da Gama was first buried. The harbour the spice ships kept finding their way back to.
Kochi, 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.
Kochi sits on a cluster of islands and peninsulas at the mouth of the Vembanad backwaters on the Malabar coast of Kerala in southwestern India. The metropolitan area passes two million residents. The historic core, Fort Kochi and Mattancherry, was held in turn by the Portuguese from 1503, the Dutch from 1663, and the British from 1814, leaving an old town of churches, warehouses, and palaces. The modern city, Ernakulam, sits across the harbour on the mainland.
The harbour opens onto the Arabian Sea and inland into Vembanad Lake, the longest in India at about 96 kilometres. The cheena vala, the cantilevered Chinese fishing nets along the Fort Kochi shore, were introduced by traders associated with the court of Kublai Khan in the fourteenth century and are still worked at high tide. The backwaters that begin here run south through Alleppey and on to Kollam, a chain of brackish lagoons that carries Kerala's old inland trade.
October through March holds the dry, cooler season. Fort Kochi and Mattancherry are walkable in a day. St Francis Church, where Vasco da Gama was first buried in 1524 before his remains were returned to Lisbon. Mattancherry Palace, built by the Portuguese in 1555 and rebuilt by the Dutch. The Paradesi Synagogue, completed in 1568, its floor tiles imported from Canton in 1762. The Kochi-Muziris Biennale opens every other December and runs into April.