Sacred Valley
— — the long green floor of the Inca world.
Not only on a wall.
“The valley the Urubamba river cut through the Andes, terraced for a thousand years and still farmed. Pisac in the east, Ollantaytambo in the west, Cusco above. The corn here is the size of a thumbnail and pale yellow. Late afternoon the light goes soft and the terraces stack like steps a giant could climb. from the studio
Sacred Valley, 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 Sacred Valley of the Incas follows the Urubamba River through the Andes northwest of Cusco, the floor sitting around 2,800 metres above sea level. The valley was the agricultural heartland of the Inca Empire and still grows the giant white corn varieties native to the region. Ollantaytambo, at the western end, is the last continuously inhabited Inca town; Pisac sits at the eastern end above a market plaza. Trains down the gorge from Ollantaytambo carry visitors the final hours to Machu Picchu.
Inca masons cut the andesite and limestone of these walls without mortar, fitting blocks so precisely that a knife blade will not enter the seam. The terraces at Pisac climb more than 600 metres above the river; the fortress-temple at Ollantaytambo carries six monoliths of rose rhyolite quarried from a mountain across the valley and dragged uphill. The stone is the record. The Spanish built their churches on top of the foundations because they could not break them.
The valley floor is high enough to thin the air. Cusco above sits near 3,400 metres and most visitors spend a night there acclimatising before descending. Days are warm under the equatorial sun and nights drop fast once it sets. The dry season, May through September, gives the clearest light and the coldest mornings; January and February bring the heaviest rain and the occasional landslide on the road to Machu Picchu.