River Shannon at Athlone
— — the slow green that runs through Ireland's middle.
Not only on a wall.
“The widest reach of the Shannon in the midlands. The river emerges from Lough Ree and slips under the Town Bridge at Athlone, the Norman castle leaning over from the west bank. Sean's Bar pours a pint just behind the castle, a room that has been pouring for a thousand years. The current is slow here, slow enough that the painted barges drift more than they steer, and the swans don't bother to move out of the way. Downstream, the river runs on toward Clonmacnoise.
River Shannon at Athlone, 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.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
The place, in three passes.
The River Shannon at Athlone is the widest navigable stretch of Ireland's longest river, crossing the town in the midlands roughly 130 km west of Dublin. The Shannon runs 360.5 km from its source at the Shannon Pot in County Cavan to its estuary at Limerick, draining about a fifth of the island. Athlone itself straddles the river between counties Westmeath and Roscommon, on a crossing that has been worked since before Norman times. North of the town the river opens into Lough Ree; south of it, the next great landmark is Clonmacnoise, the sixth-century monastic city founded by Saint Ciarán.
The Shannon drains a basin of roughly 16,800 square kilometres on its way to the Atlantic, the largest river catchment in Ireland and Britain. By the time it reaches Athlone it has slowed to almost a standstill. From Lough Allen near the headwaters to the estuary at Limerick is some 250 kilometres, with the river falling under fifty metres in total. That gradient gives the midland Shannon its characteristic stillness. The current at the Town Bridge is mild enough that the river is fully navigable here, and Waterways Ireland keeps a lock just south of the bridge to step boat traffic past the shallows. The water is the dark green of a wide midland river, not the turquoise of a fast mountain one.
Athlone Castle stands on the west bank, a Norman keep raised in 1210 by Justiciar John de Gray under King John of England. The castle was built to hold the river crossing, which it has done in some form for more than eight hundred years; the curtain walls and the polygonal central keep are largely the work of the 1790s, reinforced after the castle's role in the Williamite Wars. A short walk inland sits Sean's Bar, recognised by Guinness World Records as the oldest pub in Ireland, with foundations dated to roughly the year 900. The two together hold the town: a fortress on the water, a tavern at its back, and twelve centuries of crossing kept between them.