Varanasi
— the river answering the morning.
Not only on a wall.
“Stone steps drop into the river along an arc of nearly seven kilometres, more than eighty ghats laid end to end. Lamps move on the water at evening; smoke rises from Manikarnika at the bend. The city does the same things it has done for nearly three millennia, beside one of the oldest continually inhabited streets in India.
Varanasi, 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.
Varanasi sits on the west bank of the Ganges in the state of Uttar Pradesh, about three hundred kilometres downstream of Prayagraj and roughly eight hundred kilometres east of Delhi. The old city runs along a crescent of the river where the channel turns north, an unusual orientation that gives the ghats their morning light. Continuous habitation here stretches back to at least the eleventh century BCE, which places Varanasi among the oldest living cities in the world. The city is also called Kashi and Banaras in older usage.
The river at Varanasi is the reason the city is here. Hindus regard the Ganges as a goddess, Ganga, and bathing at its ghats is held to release the bather from accumulated karmic burden. Cremation along the river, chiefly at Manikarnika Ghat, is believed to grant moksha, release from the cycle of rebirth. Roughly thirty-two thousand cremations take place at Manikarnika each year. Pilgrims arrive from across India to bathe, to mourn, and to scatter ash.
Twice a day the ghats fill with light. At Dashashwamedh Ghat, the evening Ganga Aarti runs for about forty-five minutes after sunset; priests in saffron lift tiered brass lamps in coordinated arcs while bells and conch shells carry across the water. The dawn ceremony is quieter and older. Boats drift mid-river in the half light; small leaf-cups of marigold and flame slide downstream. The Aarti at Dashashwamedh has been performed nightly for centuries.