Kasur
— — the city the poet kept coming home to.
Not only on a wall.
“An old Punjabi city about fifty-five kilometres southeast of Lahore, on the road that runs down to the Wagah crossing. Kasur is the home town of Bulleh Shah, the eighteenth-century Sufi poet whose verses are still sung at his shrine in the centre of the old quarter. Tanneries, mango orchards, and the green fenugreek the world knows as kasuri methi all carry the city's name. The afternoon light here is the colour of brick dust and turmeric. — from the studio
Kasur, 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.
Kasur sits in the southern half of Punjab, about fifty-five kilometres southeast of Lahore and a short drive from the Indian border at Ganda Singh Wala. The district lies on the flat alluvial plain between the Ravi and Sutlej rivers, and the city itself anchors a region of mango orchards, wheat fields, and tanneries that have worked hides here since Mughal times. Population estimates for the urban area run above three hundred thousand, with the wider district above three million.
Every year in late August or early September, the urs of Bulleh Shah draws qawwali singers and pilgrims to his shrine in the old quarter. The Sufi poet, who died in 1757, wrote in Punjabi and is read across the subcontinent. His kafis are sung at the shrine through the night of the urs, with rosewater poured at the tomb and food cooked in vast iron degs for whoever comes. The festival has run, with interruptions, for more than two and a half centuries.
The Punjab plain around Kasur smells of two things in season — mango blossom in spring and the dried fenugreek that takes the city's name into kitchens worldwide. Kasuri methi is the leaf of Trigononella foenum-graecum, sun-dried on rooftops in autumn and crumbled into curries and breads. The same fields produce wheat in winter and rice in the monsoon. By April the heat climbs past forty degrees Celsius and the city's pace shifts to mornings, evenings, and the cool stone of the shrine courtyard.