Netanya
— — a long balcony above a long beach.
Not only on a wall.
“Fourteen kilometres of sandstone cliffs along the Sharon plain, dropping to a beach the colour of pale honey. The promenade runs the length of the cliff above Independence Square, where the cafés stay open late and the wind off the sea moves the awnings all evening. The city was founded in 1929 and named for the American philanthropist Nathan Straus. The diamond trade arrived after the war and stayed. — from the studio
Netanya, 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.
Netanya is a coastal city on the Sharon plain in Israel's Central District, roughly thirty kilometres north of Tel Aviv and fifty-six kilometres south of Haifa. Its population is about two hundred and thirty thousand, the seventh largest in the country. The municipality holds about fourteen kilometres of Mediterranean shoreline, the longest of any Israeli city, edged by sandstone cliffs that rise some forty metres above the beach. Founded in 1929 as a small farming village in the citrus belt, the town was named for Nathan Straus, the American co-owner of Macy's, who funded health and welfare work in Mandatory Palestine.
The shoreline runs from Poleg Beach in the south to Sironit in the north, broken by a series of named bathing beaches: Sironit, Argaman, Herzl, Blue Bay. Lifeguard towers operate from spring through autumn. The cliff face is soft kurkar sandstone, the same coastal ridge that runs south through Caesarea to Tel Aviv, and erosion along it is monitored by the Geological Survey of Israel. From the top of the cliff the sea reads as a flat plate; a single glass-floored lift, the Sironit, drops thirty-five metres down to the sand.
The centre of Netanya gathers around Kikar Ha'atzmaut, Independence Square, on the cliff above the main beach. Cafés and ice-cream kiosks run along three sides of the square; the fourth opens to the sea and a long promenade, the Tayelet, that runs north and south along the cliff edge. The diamond exchange and bourse, established after the Second World War by polishers who emigrated from Belgium, sit a short walk inland. Trains on the Israel Railways coastal line stop at Netanya station, about an hour from Ben Gurion airport.