Nellore
— — rice fields running flat to the salt of the Coromandel.
Not only on a wall.
“A delta city on the Penna River, three hours north of Chennai. The land lies flat to the Bay of Bengal — paddy in every direction, then prawn ponds, then the dunes. Pulicat Lake is an hour south, full of flamingos in winter. The old Sri Ranganatha temple sits inside the town; the river runs past its walls toward the sea. from the studio
Nellore, 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.
Nellore is a city in southern Andhra Pradesh on the south bank of the Penna River, roughly 175 km north of Chennai on the East Coast Road. It is the headquarters of Sri Potti Sriramulu Nellore District and one of the major paddy-producing belts in India — the name itself likely derives from nelli, the Telugu word for paddy. Population is about 600,000. The Bay of Bengal lies 25 km east. Pulicat Lake, India's second-largest brackish lagoon, lies 75 km south and shelters tens of thousands of flamingos each winter.
Two waters define Nellore. The Penna rises in the Nandi Hills 600 km west and crosses the city before emptying into the Bay of Bengal at Uthukur. Somasila Dam, completed in 1989 about 85 km upstream, regulates its flow and irrigates more than 400,000 acres of paddy. The second water is the lagoon. Pulicat is a 600-square-kilometre saltwater lake split between Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, the wintering ground for greater and lesser flamingos arriving from Iran and the Rann of Kutch. Aquaculture — prawn and shrimp ponds — sits between paddy and sea.
The year turns on two rhythms. The paddy cycle runs in two crops — kharif sown in June and rabi in November — with the harvest months drawing labour from across the district. The temple cycle centres on Sri Ranganatha Swamy, whose annual Brahmotsavam runs across nine days each March and draws pilgrims down the East Coast Road. Penchalakona temple, 80 km west in the Eastern Ghats, holds its festival in the same month. The north-east monsoon, October to December, brings most of the year's rain and the occasional cyclone off the Bay.