Borneo
— — the green that closes back over you.
Not only on a wall.
“The third-largest island in the world, split between Indonesian Kalimantan to the south, Malaysian Sabah and Sarawak to the north, and Brunei on the coast. From the air it reads as unbroken green cut by brown rivers that move slow through peat. Klotok boats work the Sekonyer to Tanjung Puting, where orangutans come down to the feeding stations in the late afternoon. Above the canopy the air carries woodsmoke and rain that has not yet fallen. from the studio
Borneo, 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.
Borneo is the third-largest island on earth, roughly 743,330 square kilometres, divided among three countries: Indonesia holds the southern two-thirds as Kalimantan, Malaysia holds the northern states of Sabah and Sarawak, and the sultanate of Brunei sits on the north coast. The island straddles the equator. Its interior rises through old sandstone hills toward Mount Kinabalu in Sabah at 4,095 metres, the highest point in Southeast Asia between the Himalayas and New Guinea. The Kapuas River in West Kalimantan runs 1,143 kilometres, the longest in Indonesia.
The lowland rainforest of Borneo is one of the oldest on earth, estimated at around 140 million years. The canopy closes overhead at thirty to forty metres and the understory air stays heavy, around 80 percent humidity, with the smell of wet leaf litter and dipterocarp resin. Bornean orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus), endemic to the island and classified as critically endangered by the IUCN, move through the upper canopy at first light. Hornbills call across the rivers; the gibbon song carries miles before the heat closes the morning down.
Borneo's life is organised by its rivers. The Kapuas at 1,143 kilometres, the Mahakam at 980, and the Barito at 880 drain the southern half of the island into the Java Sea. Klotok houseboats run the Sekonyer River into Tanjung Puting National Park, where Camp Leakey, founded by Biruté Galdikas in 1971, still operates as an orangutan research station. The peat-swamp water reads black and copper in the sun, stained by tannins from decaying vegetation, and the boats move at the pace the river allows.