Multan
— — a city the dust keeps and the tile remembers.
Not only on a wall.
“One of the oldest continuously inhabited cities of the subcontinent, known across South Asia as the City of Saints for the Sufi shrines that anchor its old quarter. The tomb of Shah Rukn-e-Alam rises in a tiered octagon of blue and turquoise tile above the mound that holds the citadel. Summers run hot enough to slow the streets to evening.
Multan, 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.
Multan sits on the banks of the Chenab River in southern Punjab, Pakistan, about 350 kilometres southwest of Lahore. Population within the metropolitan area sits around 1.87 million. It is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in South Asia, with origins traced back several thousand years and a recorded history through Alexander's siege of the Malli stronghold in 326 BCE, Arab conquest in 712, and successive Ghaznavid, Ghurid, Delhi Sultanate, Mughal, and Sikh rule before the British period.
Multan's old quarter is built around a raised citadel mound, on which the tomb of Shah Rukn-e-Alam, completed in 1324 for the Tughluq governor Ghiyath al-Din Tughluq, rises as a tiered octagon roughly 35 metres tall, faced in turquoise and cobalt tile. The nearby tomb of Bahauddin Zakariya, from the thirteenth century, anchors the older Suhrawardi shrine complex. The tilework that distinguishes both monuments, called kashi in Multan, is still produced by local workshops in the old city today.
Multan is one of the hottest cities in Pakistan, with summer high temperatures regularly above 45 degrees Celsius from May through July, and a long shoulder of warm dry weather through September. The dust of the Indus plain gives the light a particular ochre cast by late afternoon. Winters are short and mild. The annual Urs festivals at the major shrines, especially Shah Rukn-e-Alam in March, draw pilgrims from across the country.