Nataraja Temple
— the temple built around an empty space.
Not only on a wall.
“The Thillai Nataraja Temple at Chidambaram, about 250 kilometres south of Chennai, dedicated to Shiva as the cosmic dancer. The inner sanctum holds the Chidambara Rahasyam: a curtain drawn back to reveal not a figure but a strung garland of golden bilva leaves, the deity present as space itself. The eastern gopuram carries 108 reliefs of the karanas of Bharatanatyam, the south Indian classical dance the temple still anchors.
Nataraja 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 Thillai Nataraja Temple stands at the centre of the town of Chidambaram in Cuddalore district, Tamil Nadu, about 250 kilometres south of Chennai on the Coromandel Coast. The complex covers roughly 40 acres within four enclosing walls, with nine gopurams; the four major gateway towers rise to between 42 and 49 metres. The site is one of the Pancha Bhoota Stalas, the five temples representing the classical elements, and stands for Akasha, the element of space. The current granite and brick structure dates mainly to the Chola period of the tenth to twelfth centuries.
The temple's most studied feature is the eastern gopuram, whose interior carries 108 sculpted reliefs of the karanas, the foundational dance units codified in Bharata's Natya Shastra around the second century. The Chit Sabha, the small inner sanctum where the bronze Nataraja resides, sits beneath a roof of about 21,600 gold-plated tiles fastened with golden nails. The Raja Sabha, the thousand-pillared hall added under the later Cholas, actually contains 1,000 carved granite pillars. The architecture is largely twelfth-century, with successive Pandya, Vijayanagara, and Nayak additions through the seventeenth century.
Two festivals frame the temple's calendar. Natyanjali, held over five nights at the end of February or beginning of March around Maha Shivaratri, brings hundreds of Bharatanatyam dancers from across India and abroad to perform in the temple's prakaram as offering to Nataraja. The festival has run since 1981. Margazhi Tiruvadhirai, in the Tamil month of Margazhi (mid-December to mid-January), is the older of the two and culminates in a procession of the bronzes through the streets of Chidambaram. The Chidambara Rahasyam curtain is drawn aside several times each day.