Namib
— — the oldest desert on earth, breathing fog at dawn.
Not only on a wall.
“A long ribbon of red dune and gravel plain that runs the length of Namibia's Atlantic coast. At Sossusvlei the dunes climb past 300 metres and turn the colour of rust an hour after sunrise. Cold fog rolls inland from the Benguela current most mornings and waters a desert that has been dry, in places, for tens of millions of years. Oryx walk the salt pan; nothing follows. — from the studio
Namib, 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 Namib runs roughly 2,000 kilometres along the Atlantic seaboard of southern Africa, from the Carunjamba River in Angola through Namibia to the Olifants River in South Africa. It is widely held to be the oldest desert on earth, with arid or semi-arid conditions for at least 55 million years and perhaps as long as 80 million. Much of the Namibian section lies within Namib-Naukluft National Park; the Namib Sand Sea was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2013 for its coastal-fog-fed dune ecosystem.
Almost all of the Namib's moisture arrives as fog. The cold Benguela current chills moist Atlantic air, which drifts inland overnight and rolls over the dunes as a low white sea before sunrise. Endemic darkling beetles in the genus Onymacris collect this water by standing head-down on a crest at dawn so droplets run along their backs to the mouth. Welwitschia mirabilis, a desert plant that can live more than 1,500 years, draws from the same fog with two long ribbon leaves.
Most visitors reach the dunes through Sesriem, the gate town for Sossusvlei, roughly 360 kilometres south-west of Windhoek by gravel road. The gate opens at sunrise; inside-the-park lodges can leave an hour earlier. Dune 45, named for its distance in kilometres from the gate, is the usual sunrise climb; Big Daddy, the high dune above Deadvlei, reaches about 325 metres. The salt pan at Deadvlei holds 900-year-old camelthorn skeletons that no longer decompose in the dry air.