Kolkata
— the city the river won't let go.
Not only on a wall.
“The old capital of British India, set on the east bank of the Hooghly. Yellow Ambassador taxis still work the streets. The Howrah Bridge carries a hundred thousand people across before breakfast. In October the city paints itself for Durga Puja: pandals on every corner, the river full of clay. The trams, last of their kind in India, keep their slow lines.
Kolkata, 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.
Kolkata sits on the east bank of the Hooghly River in West Bengal, about 130 kilometres inland from the Bay of Bengal. The city holds roughly 4.5 million people in the municipal core and over 15 million across the metropolitan area. It served as the capital of British India until 1911, when the seat was moved to Delhi. The Howrah Bridge, opened in 1943, links the city to Howrah Station, one of the busiest railway terminals in the country. Kolkata remains the cultural capital of Bengali India.
For four days each autumn the city becomes a public gallery. Durga Puja, recognised by UNESCO in 2021 as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, draws an estimated ten million visitors. Neighbourhoods commission pandals, temporary pavilions, some five storeys tall, built around the goddess Durga and her four children. The work begins months ahead in Kumartuli, the potters' quarter, where clay images have been shaped since the eighteenth century. On the final day the idols are carried to the Hooghly and let go to the current.
The Victoria Memorial, finished in 1921, holds the south end of the Maidan in white Makrana marble, the same quarry that built the Taj Mahal. Lord Curzon commissioned it; William Emerson designed it; twenty-five museum galleries now sit inside. Beyond it, Park Street and Esplanade Row carry the rest of the colonial inheritance: St Paul's Cathedral, the General Post Office, the Writers' Building on Dalhousie Square. The marble holds the monsoon differently from the surrounding brick, going grey in July and white again by November.