Irtysh
— — a river that crosses three countries and keeps the same colour.
Not only on a wall.
“The Irtysh is the chief tributary of the Ob and, taken together, the seventh-longest river system in the world. It rises in the Mongolian Altai, gathers itself across eastern Kazakhstan, fills the long basin of Lake Zaysan, and then runs north through Omsk and Tobolsk before joining the Ob at Khanty-Mansiysk. In the Russian section the banks are flat, the light is wide, and the river takes on a pale, silted green that holds the sky almost without breaking it. Steamers still work the channel between Omsk and the Ob delta in summer. from the studio
Irtysh, 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 Irtysh runs about 4,248 kilometres from its headwaters in the Mongolian Altai to its confluence with the Ob at Khanty-Mansiysk in western Siberia. It crosses three countries — China, where it is known as the Black Irtysh, then Kazakhstan, then Russia — making it one of the longest transboundary rivers in Asia. The combined Ob–Irtysh system drains more than 2.9 million square kilometres, the seventh-largest river basin in the world and the principal artery of western Siberia.
Between Lake Zaysan and the Russian border, three large dams — Bukhtarma, Ust-Kamenogorsk, and Shulbinsk — have shaped the modern river into a series of long reservoirs in eastern Kazakhstan. Downstream in Russia the channel flattens and widens, taking on the milky green of suspended fine sediment carried out of the Altai. Sturgeon, sterlet, and the prized nelma whitefish still move through the lower river, and barge traffic between Omsk and Khanty-Mansiysk operates during the open-water months from roughly May through October.
The Irtysh built the cities along its course. Tobolsk, founded in 1587 on the right bank above the confluence with the Tobol, was the capital of the vast Siberian Governorate and the seat of the Siberian metropolitan see. Omsk, founded as a Cossack fortress in 1716, grew into the administrative centre of the steppe. The river was the road by which Russian Siberia was settled, and the long wooden landings at both cities still mark where the steamers tied up each spring breakup.