Red Square
— — the cobblestones every century walked across.
Not only on a wall.
“Red Square is a long cobbled rectangle on the east side of the Kremlin. The name has nothing to do with the colour of the stones or the politics that came later; the Old Russian word for red and the word for beautiful share a root. St. Basil's stands at the south end, its onion domes painted in the bright colours of an old fairground. Lenin's mausoleum is sunk along the Kremlin wall opposite the GUM department store. People cross the square in any season, in any weather, often quietly. from the studio
Red Square, 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.
Red Square is the central public square of Moscow, set immediately east of the Kremlin walls. It runs roughly 330 metres long by 70 metres wide, paved in dark grey cobblestone. Saint Basil's Cathedral closes the south end, the State Historical Museum the north, and the GUM department store the east face. The square and the Kremlin together were inscribed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in 1990. The name comes from the Old Russian word krasnaya, meaning both red and beautiful, and predates any modern political association.
Saint Basil's Cathedral was completed in 1561 under Tsar Ivan IV to mark the capture of Kazan. Its nine chapels rise around a central tower, each crowned with a differently patterned onion dome added over the following century. The Kremlin walls along the western edge of the square date to the 1480s, built in red brick by Italian masters Pietro Antonio Solari and Marco Ruffo. Lenin's Mausoleum, designed by Alexey Shchusev and finished in granite in 1930, sits low against the wall opposite the GUM department store, whose long arched façade dates to 1893.
Red Square carries the calendar of the Russian state. Military parades on 9 May mark Victory Day, the end of the Great Patriotic War in 1945, and have been held in the square almost every year since. New Year's Eve draws large crowds for the Kremlin clock at midnight, and in December a seasonal market and ice rink fill the cobblestones in front of GUM. The square has also held coronation processions, religious feasts, and the funerals of tsars and general secretaries; few public spaces in Europe have been worn smooth by so many calendars at once.