Timor
— — a dry island in the Sea of Sawu.
Not only on a wall.
“The western half of Timor, in eastern Indonesia. Dry savannah and limestone hills, lontar palms standing in the heat. The capital Kupang sits on the southwest coast where the Sea of Sawu meets the Indian Ocean. Inland, the Atoni and Dawan villages still weave the warm-red ikat that gives the island its colour signature. Sandalwood drew the first Portuguese ships in the sixteenth century.
Timor, 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.
Timor is the largest island in the eastern Lesser Sundas, split since 2002 between Indonesian West Timor and the independent nation of Timor-Leste. The Indonesian half lies within East Nusa Tenggara province, with Kupang on the southwest coast as its capital and main port. The island is hot and largely dry, with a single short wet season. Lontar palms, savannah grass, and limestone hills dominate the interior. The Atoni and Dawan peoples have lived here for centuries, and their warm-red ikat weaving is the island's best-known craft.
Timor sits in the shadow of Australia and feels it: eight to nine months of dry trade winds, then a short monsoon from December to March. The hills run east to west across the island and break the rain on the southern coast, leaving the north drier still. The dry season air carries the smell of dust, eucalyptus, and grass smoke from the small fires farmers set to clear the savannah. The Indian Ocean to the south is colder than the Sea of Sawu to the north.
Sandalwood drew the first Portuguese ships in the sixteenth century, and the Portuguese held the eastern half of the island into 1975. The Dutch took the western half in the seventeenth century, and it joined independent Indonesia in 1949. The Atoni and Dawan peoples have lived here far longer, and their ikat weaving (warm red, indigo, geometric) still marks village identity and family rank. Each cloth is woven by hand on a backstrap loom and can take months to finish.