Ravi River
— — the river Lahore was built to face.
Not only on a wall.
“The Ravi rises in the Bara Bhangal of Himachal Pradesh, falls through the gorges below Chamba, and runs out into the Punjab plain. It crosses into Pakistan near Madhopur and turns south past Lahore, where the Mughal city took its shape along the eastern bank. The Indus Waters Treaty of 1960 allotted its waters to India; what reaches Lahore now is a thinner river than the one Akbar knew. Below Multan it folds into the Chenab. From the studio.
Ravi River, 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.
The Ravi is one of the five rivers that give Punjab its name, the westernmost of the eastern tributaries of the Indus. It rises in the Bara Bhangal range of Himachal Pradesh at roughly 4,000 metres, runs about 720 kilometres through Chamba district, Pathankot, the India-Pakistan border, and the Pakistani plain past Lahore and Multan, and joins the Chenab near Ahmadpur Sial. Its catchment covers about 14,400 square kilometres. The river is allocated to India under the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960, brokered by the World Bank.
Under the Indus Waters Treaty signed at Karachi on 19 September 1960, the three eastern rivers — Ravi, Beas, Sutlej — were assigned to India for unrestricted use, and the three western rivers to Pakistan. The Madhopur barrage on the Ravi and the Thein Dam on its upper course, completed in 2001, divert most of the flow before the river crosses into Pakistan. The result is a much-diminished river at Lahore, where in low-flow seasons the channel is shallow enough to wade and the floodplain is contested ground for development.
Lahore took its Mughal shape along the eastern bank of the Ravi. The Walled City, the Lahore Fort, the Badshahi Mosque, and the tomb of the emperor Jahangir at Shahdara across the river are all set in relation to the old channel. The river itself has shifted west over the centuries, leaving the Shalimar Gardens further inland than they once stood. The monsoon, arriving in July, still raises the channel sharply; in dry months the bed is wide and pale. The annual Basant kite festival of pre-2007 Lahore took place along this same skyline.