Tehran
— — a city the snowline watches over.
Not only on a wall.
“A capital that climbs. The southern districts sit near nine hundred metres and the northern ones lean against the Alborz, with the snowline on Tochal hanging above the rooftops through the cold months. The bazaar still sets the day's pace, the traffic finds its way, and the tea is steeped strong and poured into small glasses. On clear winter mornings Damavand shows its cap to the northeast.
Tehran, 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.
Iran's capital, on the southern slope of the Alborz Mountains in the north-central plateau. The city holds about 9 million people, with roughly 16 million across the metropolitan area, and stretches from around 900 metres elevation in the south to 1,800 metres in the north. Tehran has been the seat of government since Agha Mohammad Khan of the Qajar dynasty moved the capital there in 1796. Mount Damavand rises 5,609 metres about 66 kilometres to the northeast, the highest peak in the Middle East.
The city climbs nine hundred metres from south to north, and the air thins and cools as the streets rise. Winter inversions trap the lower districts under a grey ceiling for weeks at a time. Upper Tehran sits clearer, against the Alborz. Above the city the Tochal cable car climbs to 3,964 metres, and on clear mornings Damavand shows its snowcap 66 kilometres northeast. The cleaner air after a north wind is one of the small reliable mercies of the year.
The Grand Bazaar covers more than ten kilometres of vaulted corridor in central Tehran, most of the current built fabric dating to the early nineteenth-century Qajar period. Golestan Palace, finished in its present form in the same era, was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2013 for its mirrored halls, garden, and Persian-European synthesis. The walls of the old city are gone, but the stone of the bazaar still carries the weight of Tehran's daily commerce.