Calabar
— — the city that throws the longest carnival on the continent.
Not only on a wall.
“Capital of Cross River State, on a peninsula where the Calabar and Cross rivers meet before the Atlantic. The colonial port that was the first capital of Southern Nigeria, then handed the role to Lagos in 1906. Every December the whole city closes for the Calabar Carnival, a month of music and band competitions that draws crews from across the continent. — from the studio
Calabar, 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.
Calabar sits on a peninsula in Cross River State, southeastern Nigeria, where the Calabar River meets the broader Cross before both empty into the Bight of Bonny. The urban population is about 460,000. The city served as the capital of the Niger Coast Protectorate and the Southern Nigeria Protectorate from 1885 until 1906, when British administration moved to Lagos. The old town holds the Mary Slessor mission house and the Calabar Museum, set in the 1884 Old Residency built by the colonial administration above the marina.
Every December the city stages the Calabar Carnival, sometimes called the longest street festival in Africa. Five competing bands (Seagull, Passion 4, Bayside, Masta Blasta, and Freedom) prepare costumes and choreography across the year and parade the 12-kilometre route on Carnival Day, December 27. The event was founded in 2004 by then-Governor Donald Duke as a tourism program for Cross River State. The state economy now plans its calendar around the festival, with the dry season pulling visitors from Lagos, Abuja, and abroad.
The Calabar River carries the city's name and its history. The protected anchorage made Calabar one of the most active slave-trade ports on the Bight of Biafra in the 18th century, and a palm-oil port through the 19th. Tinapa, a resort and free-trade zone on the riverbank, opened in 2007 as a regional commercial draw. The Marina waterfront and the slave-history museum at the old Slave Park sit on the same shore the trade once worked, with the river still moving cargo to small craft along the wharves.