Valley of Mexico
— — a lake the city remembers it used to be.
Not only on a wall.
“A closed basin at about 2,240 metres, held in by volcanoes — Popocatépetl and Iztaccíhuatl to the southeast, the Ajusco range to the south. Once a chain of five shallow lakes the Mexica built Tenochtitlan inside. The Spaniards drained most of the water. Now Mexico City fills the basin floor, and on a clear morning after rain the snow on Popo shows above the rooftops. — from the studio
Valley of Mexico, 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 Valley of Mexico is a high endorheic basin in central Mexico, about 9,560 square kilometres in area, sitting at roughly 2,240 metres of elevation. It is ringed by mountain ranges and volcanoes: the Sierra Nevada to the east with Popocatépetl at 5,426 metres and Iztaccíhuatl at 5,230 metres, the Ajusco range to the south, and the Sierra de Guadalupe to the north. Until the 17th century the basin floor held five shallow connected lakes — Texcoco, Xochimilco, Chalco, Xaltocan, Zumpango — drained by Spanish colonial engineers to control flooding. Mexico City and its metropolitan area now occupy most of the basin.
The basin has a temperate highland climate with two clear seasons. Dry season runs roughly November through April, with cool nights and the clearest mountain views; the snowfields on Popocatépetl and Iztaccíhuatl show most reliably in December and January. Rainy season runs May through October, with afternoon thunderstorms that clear the air and sometimes leave the volcanoes visible at dusk. The basin's elevation means cooler temperatures than the Mexican coasts year round, generally 10 to 25 degrees Celsius, and visitors from sea level often feel the altitude for a day or two.
The basin is reached through Mexico City, served by Benito Juárez International Airport and the newer Felipe Ángeles airport to the north. From the city centre, the volcano viewpoints in Iztaccíhuatl-Popocatépetl National Park lie about 70 kilometres east via the Paso de Cortés. The remaining canals at Xochimilco, inscribed by UNESCO in 1987 with the historic centre of Mexico City, sit in the southern basin. Teotihuacan, the great pre-Columbian city, rises in the northeastern corner about 50 kilometres from the centre.