Kuching
— — the river city that took the cat for a name.
Not only on a wall.
“The capital of Sarawak, set along a slow brown river on the northwest coast of Borneo. The waterfront promenade runs from the Astana, the white residence of the old White Rajahs, downstream past Fort Margherita and the new golden-domed assembly building. Cats turn up in murals and statues on most corners. An hour up the road, the orangutans of Semenggoh come down for the morning feeding when the fruit in the forest is thin.
Kuching, 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.
Kuching is the capital of Sarawak, the largest state of Malaysia, on the northwest coast of Borneo. The city sits roughly 30 kilometres inland on the Sarawak River, with a population of about 570,000 in the city proper and 845,000 across the metropolitan area at the 2020 census. It was the seat of the Brooke dynasty, the so-called White Rajahs, who ruled the Kingdom of Sarawak from 1841 until the Japanese occupation in 1941. The river divides the city into a south bank with the old shophouses and a north bank with the historic government residences.
The waterfront is a roughly two-kilometre promenade along the south bank, redeveloped through the 1990s and 2010s. Across the river, the Astana was built in 1870 by Charles Brooke as the Rajah's residence and is now the official home of the Governor of Sarawak. Fort Margherita, finished in 1879 and named for Charles's wife Margaret, sits a short walk downstream. The new Sarawak State Legislative Assembly building, opened in 2009, anchors the bend with a nine-sided golden roof. The old shophouses on Carpenter Street and along Main Bazaar date from the late nineteenth century.
Kuching International Airport sits 11 kilometres south of the city, with daily connections to Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, and Brunei. Most visitors come for the river city itself and for day trips into the surrounding nature: Bako National Park, gazetted in 1957 and the oldest in Sarawak, is 37 kilometres north by road and boat; the Semenggoh Wildlife Centre, 24 kilometres south, runs morning and afternoon orangutan feedings. The Sarawak Cultural Village at the foot of Mount Santubong holds the annual Rainforest World Music Festival each July, in operation since 1998.