Niamey
— — red dust the river holds against.
Not only on a wall.
“The capital of Niger, set across both banks of the Niger River where the Sahel begins its long fade into the Sahara. Mud-brick walls in the older quarters take on a deep ochre after the harmattan, and the Grand Marché spills out into Avenue de l'Uranium with cloth, millet and dried fish. The Kennedy Bridge crosses to the south bank, lit blue at night. Late in the dry season the river drops far enough to bare its sandbars, and pirogues thread between them while egrets stand in the shallows.
Niamey, 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.
Niamey is the capital and largest city of Niger, set on the banks of the Niger River in the country's south-west at an elevation of about 207 metres. Its metropolitan population is estimated at over 1.3 million and growing quickly. The city was a modest fishing settlement until the French colonial administration moved the territorial capital here from Zinder in 1926, after which it expanded rapidly along both banks of the river. Today it is the political, university and commercial centre of the country and the western anchor of the Sahel corridor that runs east to N'Djamena.
The Niger River is the city's defining geography, cutting it into a denser northern bank and a younger southern bank linked by the Kennedy Bridge, opened in 1970, and the newer Chinese-built General Seyni Kountché Bridge of 2011. Water levels swing widely between the August rains and the late dry season in May, when the river drops far enough to bare long sandbars used by pirogue fishermen. The Niger National Museum keeps a riverside hippo pool, and from the Corniche it is common to see the animals surface at dusk.
Niamey sits inside the Sahelian climate band: a long dry season from October to May, a short rainy season in summer, and yearly averages near 29 degrees Celsius. From December into February the harmattan blows fine red dust off the Sahara, hazing the sky to ochre and softening the outlines of the Grand Mosque and the Kennedy Bridge. April and May bring the hottest stretch, when afternoon highs commonly pass 40 degrees Celsius before the first storms of the wet season break.