Krasnoyarsk
— — the river that splits the country in two.
Not only on a wall.
“A Siberian city on the Yenisei, founded in 1628 as a wooden fort at the confluence with the Kacha. The river here runs ice-free year-round below the Krasnoyarsk Dam, drifting steam over the banks in deep winter. Just south of town the Stolby pillars rise out of the taiga, rust-coloured syenite climbed for a century by local mountaineers. The Trans-Siberian crosses the river on a single stone bridge. — from the studio
Krasnoyarsk, 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.
Krasnoyarsk sits on both banks of the Yenisei River in central Siberia, near the geographic centre of Russia. Founded in 1628 as a Cossack fort at the river's confluence with the Kacha, it grew through Trans-Siberian Railway construction in the 1890s and the Soviet industrial build-up of the 20th century. The current population is near 1.1 million, making it the third-largest city in Siberia after Novosibirsk and Omsk. The Yenisei here marks a traditional dividing line between West and East Siberia.
The Krasnoyarsk Stolby — pillars — are a cluster of syenite rock towers rising from the taiga about 10 km south of the city, protected since 1925 in one of Russia's oldest nature reserves. The named formations carry old climber names: Grandfather, Feathers, Lion's Gates. Local stolbism, a free-climbing tradition without ropes or shoes, took root in the 1880s and is still practised today. The largest pillars stand more than 100 metres above the forest floor and are reached on foot from the city outskirts.
The Yenisei is among the world's great rivers, draining nearly 2.6 million km² to the Arctic Ocean. At Krasnoyarsk it runs about 600 metres wide and stays ice-free in winter for tens of kilometres downstream of the Krasnoyarsk Dam, completed in 1972. The released water is dense and cold, and steam rises off the surface when air temperatures drop below -25°C. Generations of locals have walked the embankments to watch it. The river is on the 10-rouble banknote, with the dam behind.