Semey
— — the river the steppe leans toward.
Not only on a wall.
“A city of about 350,000 on the Irtysh River, at the edge of the Kazakh steppe. Known as Semipalatinsk until 2007. Dostoyevsky spent five years of internal exile here in the 1850s, writing the first chapters of his recovery. The suspension bridge across the Irtysh, opened in 2000, was the longest of its kind in Central Asia. — from the studio
Semey, 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.
Semey sits on both banks of the Irtysh River in the Abai Region of northeast Kazakhstan, near the border with Russia. The city had a population of about 350,000 at the 2021 census. It was founded in 1718 as a Russian fortress and called Semipalatinsk until the official rename in 2007. The Irtysh runs north from here through Russia to the Arctic Ocean. The city is the regional hub for the Kazakh Altai foothills and the gateway to the surrounding Abai literary heritage sites.
The Irtysh is one of the longest rivers in the world at roughly 4,250 kilometres from its source in the Altai to its confluence with the Ob in Siberia. At Semey it is already a wide channel, more than 600 metres across at the suspension bridge. The river freezes solid through the long winters and breaks up in April. The 750-metre cable-stayed bridge, opened in 2000, was the longest of its type in Central Asia at completion and remains the dominant landmark on the Semey skyline.
Semey is reached by domestic flights from Almaty and Astana into Semey International Airport, about ten kilometres west of the city. The Turksib Railway, completed in 1930 and still in service, runs north-south through Semey and provides overnight connections to both capitals. The Dostoyevsky Literary Memorial Museum, on the site where the writer lived during his exile, is open Tuesday through Sunday. The Abai Kunanbayev Museum, dedicated to the nineteenth-century Kazakh poet whose mausoleum stands nearby, holds the regional literary archive.