Vale of Avoca
— — two rivers learning the same name.
Not only on a wall.
“The confluence of the Avonmore and the Avonbeg in South Wicklow, the Big River and the Small, folding together into the Avoca and on to the sea at Arklow. Thomas Moore put a song to the spot in 1807, and it has carried the name Meeting of the Waters ever since. Three kilometres downriver, the mill at Avoca village has been weaving since 1723. The valley is wooded, dark with oak in summer, copper-red in autumn. There are quiet pull-offs along the road where the river sound is the only sound.
Vale of Avoca, 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 Vale of Avoca is the wooded river valley of South County Wicklow, about 66 kilometres south of Dublin and roughly 13 kilometres inland from the Irish Sea at Arklow. The Avoca River itself is some 56 kilometres long, formed at the Meeting of the Waters, the confluence of the Avonmore and the Avonbeg about three kilometres north of Avoca village. The valley sits between the Wicklow Mountains to the north, with Glendalough as the next reach upcountry, and the gentler farmland that runs to the coast. The Dublin to Rosslare railway threads the lower vale, with the nearest station at Rathdrum. County Wicklow is locally called the Garden of Ireland.
The confluence is famous because Thomas Moore wrote a song about it. In 1807 the Dublin poet set new lyrics, beginning There is not in the wide world a valley so sweet as that vale in whose bosom the bright waters meet, to an older Irish air called The Old Head of Dennis. The piece appeared in the first volume of his Irish Melodies in 1808 and became one of the most-sung melodies of the nineteenth century. Moore is said to have written the lines under a tree near the join; the original tree is long gone and a replacement was planted on the same spot, marked now by a small monument. The Avonmore (Big River) and the Avonbeg (Small River) carry the run-off of the Wicklow uplands; together they make the Avoca, which reaches the sea at Arklow.
Three kilometres downriver from the confluence is Avoca village, and on its riverbank stands Avoca Mill, established in 1723 and the oldest working mill in Ireland. The mill still weaves the throws, blankets, and scarves that carry the village's name, and runs free guided tours through the working sheds. The village itself stood in for the fictional Ballykissangel in the BBC series of the same name, filmed in Avoca from 1996 to 2001, and a number of the pubs and shopfronts from the show are still recognisable. Castle Howard, a privately held estate on the river above the village, is the spot Moore later named in a letter to Lord John Russell as the one that suggested the song. Most visitors come in summer; autumn is the quieter season and the more honest light.