Jordan River
— — the water the prophets walked beside.
Not only on a wall.
“A narrow river running south through one of the oldest valleys in scripture. The lower stretch holds the Jordanian east bank from the Yarmouk down to the salt flats above the Dead Sea, with reeds, tamarisk, and the long quiet of the rift. At Al-Maghtas the bank widens and pilgrims arrive in quiet groups from every continent. The current is slow now, the volume a fraction of what it was a century ago, and the water carries the colour of the silt it has gathered along the way. from the studio
Jordan River, 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.
The Jordan rises on the slopes of Mount Hermon, gathers from the Hasbani, Banias, and Dan headwaters, then runs about 251 kilometres south through the Sea of Galilee and on to the Dead Sea, the lowest body of water on earth. The lower river forms the political border between the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and the West Bank. Diversion for agriculture and municipal supply has reduced the discharge to a small fraction of its historic flow, and the channel runs narrow and slow through the Jordan Valley.
The lower Jordan carries heavy silt and a high salt load by the time it reaches the Dead Sea, the result of upstream diversion and the saline springs that feed the middle reach. Historic flow into the Dead Sea was roughly 1.3 billion cubic metres a year; current inflow has fallen to under 100 million in many years. The colour reads ochre to olive-brown in summer and clouds further after winter rains wash the marl banks of the valley downstream.
On the east bank, Al-Maghtas (Bethany Beyond the Jordan) was inscribed by UNESCO in 2015 as the traditional site of the baptism of Jesus. The site sits about 9 kilometres north of the Dead Sea, near the town of South Shuna in Balqa Governorate. Visitors enter through the Baptism Site visitor centre; private vehicles are not permitted past the gate, and a shuttle runs to the river. Mornings are quietest; the site closes earlier in winter.