Chihuahuan Desert
— — the desert that keeps its water in the rock.
Not only on a wall.
“The largest desert in North America, most of it in Mexico, between the two Sierra Madres at an elevation high enough that summer nights cool off and winter brings frost. Creosote and lechuguilla agave to the horizon, and then, where a fault leaks groundwater, a pool full of fish that exist nowhere else. The land reads empty until you slow down.
Chihuahuan Desert, 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 Chihuahuan Desert covers roughly 362,000 square kilometres, by far the largest desert in North America, with most of its area in Mexico across the states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Durango, Zacatecas, Nuevo León, and San Luis Potosí, and a northern arm reaching into New Mexico and Texas. It is a high-elevation rain-shadow desert, held between the Sierra Madre Occidental to the west and the Sierra Madre Oriental to the east. The signature plant is the lechuguilla agave, found nowhere else.
The desert is dry on the surface and surprisingly wet underneath. In Coahuila the spring-fed pools of Cuatro Ciénegas hold endemic fish, snails, and stromatolite communities that have evolved in isolation for thousands of years. The Río Conchos feeds the Rio Grande from the Mexican side and carries most of the flow downstream of Big Bend. Where the limestone breaks, water reaches the surface and the desert turns abruptly green for a few hundred metres.
Most rain falls in a short summer monsoon between July and September, when convective storms build off the Sierras in the afternoon and the creosote breaks into resin that scents the air for miles. Winters are cool, with frost down to the lower basins and snow on the higher ranges of Coahuila. Spring is the bloom window: ocotillo, prickly pear, and yucca all flower in a tight stretch before the heat sets in. The desert reads its calendar by water.