Shillong
— — a town built around the weather.
Not only on a wall.
“The capital of Meghalaya, set on a pine-covered ridge at about 1,500 metres in the East Khasi Hills. The British called it the Scotland of the East and the name still holds in the long monsoon, when cloud drifts through the marketplaces and the rain comes for days at a time. Ward's Lake holds the centre. The Khasi tongue runs alongside English in the schools. — from the studio
Shillong, 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.
Shillong is the capital of Meghalaya in northeast India, set on a plateau in the East Khasi Hills at about 1,496 metres. The population is roughly 350,000 in the urban district. The town grew from a small Khasi village after 1864, when the British made it the headquarters of the Assam province, and remained a hill-station retreat through the colonial period. It sits about 100 kilometres south of Guwahati, on the road that climbs to Cherrapunji and the southern slope of the plateau.
The air is the reason the town exists. Daytime temperatures rarely cross 24°C even at the height of summer, and winter nights fall to about 4°C. The pine forests that ring the ridges scent the air through the dry months from November to February. Above the town, Shillong Peak rises to 1,965 metres and gives a long view across the Khasi Hills toward the Bangladesh plain on a clear day. The cool draws weekenders from the Assam lowlands in every season.
The Khasi Hills receive some of the heaviest rainfall on the planet. Cherrapunji and Mawsynram, an hour south of Shillong, hold most of the recorded extremes; the town itself averages about 2,400 millimetres a year, with the bulk falling between June and September. The monsoon is the long fact of life here. Roofs slope steeply. Drainage runs along every street. Markets close early when the cloud comes through the lanes, which it does most afternoons in July and August.