Tiruvannamalai
— — a hill that has been a fire for a very long time.
Not only on a wall.
“A temple town gathered around a single hill. Arunachala rises 814 metres straight out of the Tamil plain, and the great Annamalaiyar Temple sits at its base — one of the five elemental Shiva shrines of South India, the one that holds fire. A 14-kilometre footpath, the girivalam, circles the hill. Pilgrims walk it on the full moon, barefoot, mostly at night. from the studio
Tiruvannamalai, 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.
Tiruvannamalai is a temple town of roughly 145,000 people in Tiruvannamalai District, northern Tamil Nadu, about 185 kilometres southwest of Chennai. It is built around Arunachala, a granite hill that rises 814 metres from the surrounding plain and is held in the Shaiva tradition as Shiva himself in elemental form. The Annamalaiyar Temple at the foot of the hill is one of the largest temple complexes in India, covering roughly 10 hectares, with a 66-metre eastern gopuram. The town has been a continuous pilgrimage centre since at least the seventh century.
Arunachala is geologically very old — Precambrian charnockite granite, part of the Eastern Ghats system, with a single rounded summit ridge running roughly northwest to southeast. Devotees do not climb it casually; the practice is to walk the girivalam, a paved 14-kilometre footpath that circles the base. The path passes eight directional lingams, each tied to a cardinal point. The twentieth-century sage Ramana Maharshi, who arrived in 1896 and stayed until his death in 1950, taught that the hill itself was the teacher; his ashram on the southern flank remains a working place of practice.
The year at Tiruvannamalai turns on Karthigai Deepam, the festival of the great lamp, held on the full moon of the Tamil month Karthigai (November or December). At dusk a cauldron of ghee and camphor is lit on the summit of Arunachala; the flame is visible for many kilometres across the plain and burns for several days. Pilgrim counts during the festival run into the millions. On every full moon through the year a smaller observance, the Pournami girivalam, draws hundreds of thousands to walk the 14-kilometre path overnight.