Sargodha
— — a citrus plain under the City of Eagles.
Not only on a wall.
“A planned colonial city laid out in 1903 on the central Punjab plain, between the Jhelum and the Chenab. Kinnow orchards spread to the horizon, and the country's heaviest mandarin harvest comes through here each January. To the south, the Kirana Hills rise dark out of flat farmland, and the air over the cantonment carries the long sound of fighter jets from the Pakistan Air Force base.
Sargodha, 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.
Sargodha is the fifth-largest city of Pakistani Punjab, on the central Doab between the Jhelum and Chenab rivers, about 190 kilometres northwest of Lahore. Population in the city proper is roughly 750,000, with the wider district above three million. The British laid out Sargodha in 1903 as an agricultural-colony settlement, with a grid of squares and tree-lined avenues named after canal officers. It is the administrative seat of Sargodha Division and home to the University of Sargodha, established in 1929 as a degree college and granted university status in 2002.
The kinnow, a mandarin-tangerine hybrid developed at the University of California in 1915 and brought to Pakistani Punjab in the 1940s, defines Sargodha's year. The district produces roughly 95 percent of Pakistan's kinnow crop and over two million tonnes in a strong season, harvested from December through February. Orchards spread across the surrounding tehsils of Bhalwal and Kot Momin, and packing sheds along the Faisalabad road sort fruit for export to Russia, Indonesia, the Gulf, and the Philippines. The smell of citrus carries on cold January mornings from every cold-storage yard.
Sargodha is known as the City of Eagles for PAF Base Mushaf, the central operational airfield of the Pakistan Air Force since 1948. The base sits north of the city, and the cantonment around it is among the most planned districts in Punjab. Twenty kilometres south, the Kirana Hills rise abruptly out of the wheat plain, a chain of pre-Cambrian quartzite that geologists date above 800 million years, isolated outcrops in an otherwise flat landscape. The hills hold ancient stupa remnants and were used for cold tests of nuclear devices in 1983 and 1984.