Pekanbaru
— — a river city the equator keeps warm.
Not only on a wall.
“The provincial capital of Riau, sitting on a slow brown bend of the Siak. The An Nur mosque holds one end of the skyline; the old river docks hold the other. Tugs still work downriver toward the Strait of Malacca. Afternoons arrive heavy with rain and clear as quickly as they came. — from the studio
Pekanbaru, 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.
Pekanbaru is the capital of Riau province on the island of Sumatra and the largest city on the Sumatran east coast, with a metropolitan population above one million. It sits roughly 160 kilometres inland from the Strait of Malacca on the Siak River, a deep blackwater channel navigable by ocean-going vessels. The Sultan Sharif Kasim II Airport links the city to Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, and Singapore. The name translates roughly as new market, recording its founding as a riverside trading post in 1784 under Sultan Muhammad Ali Abdul Jalil Muazzam Syah.
The Siak is the deepest river in Indonesia, reaching depths above twenty metres in stretches near the city, which is why tankers and palm-oil barges still reach the inland docks. The river runs about 370 kilometres from the highlands of Bukit Barisan east through peat swamp forest to the Strait of Malacca. The Siak Sri Indrapura palace downstream, residence of the old sultans, gives the river its historical centre of gravity. Erosion and palm-plantation runoff have darkened the water over the last fifty years.
Pekanbaru sits just one degree north of the equator, so the climate is rainforest year. Daytime highs hover near 32°C with humidity above eighty percent; the wet months run roughly October through January. The Masjid Agung An-Nur, built in the 1960s in a Malay-Moorish manner with white domes and a turquoise pool, is the most recognised landmark and the easiest entry to the city's Malay-Riau heritage. Visitors typically arrive via Sultan Sharif Kasim II Airport, often as a stop on the way to the Bono tidal bore further down the Kampar.