Salalah
— — the desert the monsoon turns green.
Not only on a wall.
“A coastal city on the Arabian Sea where the southwest monsoon, the khareef, reaches Arabia for ten weeks every summer. The hills above the city turn green. Mist hangs in the wadis. Frankincense trees, harvested here since antiquity, line the road north to Wadi Dawkah. The beaches at Al Mughsail stay quiet outside the season. — from the studio
Salalah, 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.
Salalah is the capital of Dhofar, Oman's southernmost governorate, on the Arabian Sea about 1,000 kilometres south of Muscat. The metropolitan population is roughly 400,000. Frankincense from the Boswellia sacra trees of the inland wadis has been traded out of this coast since at least the third millennium BCE, and four surrounding sites (Al-Baleed, Sumhuram, Wadi Dawkah, and Shisr) together form the UNESCO Land of Frankincense World Heritage property, inscribed in 2000. Coconut palms and banana plantations along the coastal strip mark the only true monsoon-fed agriculture on the Arabian Peninsula.
From late June through early September, the southwest monsoon reaches the Dhofar coast and only the Dhofar coast. The rest of the peninsula stays in summer heat above 40°C. Locals call the season khareef. Hills that were tan in May turn deep green. Light mist lifts off the wadis and pools. Salalah's khareef festival, running in Al Saada park, draws visitors from across the Gulf who come specifically for weather that does not exist in their own countries during August.
For ten weeks Salalah's air carries a smell that is not Arabian: wet soil, wild basil, frangipani, and at the edge of the city the resin of the frankincense trees the monsoon has just rinsed. Daytime temperatures sit between 22 and 27°C while Muscat runs above 40°C. The coast at Al Mughsail, 40 kilometres west, throws sea spray through the natural blowholes when the swell is up. Outside khareef, the air is dry, sea-cooled, and almost forgettable, a different city under the same name.