Medan
— — the gate the highlands open onto.
Not only on a wall.
“The capital of North Sumatra and the third largest city in Indonesia, set on a low plain where the Deli River runs out toward the Malacca Strait. The colonial trading town the Dutch built around the tobacco plantations is still legible in the centre: the black domes of the Maimun Palace, the pale Moorish arches of the Great Mosque, the long shophouse arcades of Kesawan. Inland the road climbs four hours south through palm and rubber to the rim of Lake Toba, the largest volcanic lake in the world. from the studio
Medan, 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.
Medan is the capital of North Sumatra and the largest city on the island of Sumatra, set on the low coastal plain where the Deli and Babura rivers run out toward the Malacca Strait. The 2020 census recorded a city population of about 2.4 million, with the wider Mebidangro metropolitan area closer to 4.7 million, ranking it the third largest urban area in Indonesia after Jakarta and Surabaya. The settlement grew from a Karo Batak village called Medan Putri into the Dutch colonial seat of the Deli tobacco plantations after Jacob Nienhuys established the Deli Maatschappij in 1869. Kualanamu International Airport, the country's third busiest, lies 39 kilometres east.
The Sultanate of Deli built the Maimun Palace between 1888 and 1891 to a design by the Italian architect Captain Theodoor van Erp, blending Malay, Mughal, Italian, and Spanish forms beneath two black onion domes. Two blocks west, Sultan Ma'mun Al Rashid Perkasa Alamsyah commissioned the Masjid Raya Al Mashun, completed in 1909 by the Dutch architect Dingemans in a Moorish-Indian style with marble from Italy and chandeliers from Amsterdam. The Tjong A Fie Mansion on Jalan Ahmad Yani, finished in 1900, holds two storeys of mixed Chinese, Malay, and European detail around an open courtyard, restored and opened as a museum in 2009.
The city is the standard entry point for the North Sumatran highlands. Lake Toba, the largest volcanic lake in the world at about 1,130 square kilometres and 505 metres deep, sits four hours south by road or three by the new Medan-Tebing Tinggi-Parapat toll. The Gunung Leuser National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage rainforest and one of the last refuges of the Sumatran orangutan, begins three hours west at Bukit Lawang. The Karo Highlands village of Berastagi, with its active volcanoes Sibayak and Sinabung, lies two hours south. The local table is famous: bika ambon cake, Soto Medan, durian on Jalan Semarang at night.