Mumbai
— — the city the monsoon writes its name across.
Not only on a wall.
“Seven islands the British joined with causeways, now one city of twenty-one million. The Gateway of India stands on the harbour where the Arabian Sea meets the basalt. In the late hour the tide pulls back from Marine Drive and the streetlamps curve along the bay. Vendors push chai through the queue at Churchgate. A city that does not pause, photographed at the half-second it almost does.
Mumbai, 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.
Mumbai sits on the western coast of India in the state of Maharashtra, on a peninsula that began as seven separate islands fused through a series of land reclamations between 1782 and 1845. It is India's most populous city, with a metropolitan area exceeding twenty-one million. The city anchors the country's financial system, hosting the Reserve Bank of India, the Bombay Stock Exchange, and the headquarters of most national banks. Greater Mumbai covers roughly 603 square kilometres along Salsette Island, bounded by the Arabian Sea to the west and Thane Creek to the east.
The Gateway of India, completed in 1924, stands twenty-six metres tall at Apollo Bunder, basalt cut in a fusion of Indo-Saracenic and Gujarati arch work. Across the harbour, the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus, finished in 1887 to the design of Frederick William Stevens, marks the height of Victorian Gothic in the city and carries UNESCO World Heritage listing. Between them, the colonnaded arc of Marine Drive curves three kilometres along Back Bay, its art-deco apartment blocks an inheritance of the 1930s building boom.
Mumbai's year turns on the southwest monsoon. From early June through late September the city receives roughly 2,200 millimetres of rain, more than four-fifths of its annual total, in sheets that flood low streets within minutes. October and November are humid and still. The dry season runs December to May, with January nights cooling near eighteen degrees and May afternoons climbing past thirty-three. Sea breezes off the Arabian Sea soften the coast year-round, and the salt is in everything the wind touches.