Severny Island
— — ice that goes to the sea, and a wind that does not stop.
Not only on a wall.
“Severny is the northern island of the Novaya Zemlya archipelago, a long bow of land between the Barents and Kara seas. Most of it lies under an ice cap that calves directly into the ocean. The interior is closed; it was the test range for the Tsar Bomba in 1961, the largest device ever detonated. The coast is given to glaciers, polar bears, and the few cliffs where seabirds nest. The wind, the maps say, does not stop. from the studio
Severny Island, 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.
Severny Island is the northern of the two main islands of Novaya Zemlya, the long Arctic archipelago that divides the Barents Sea from the Kara Sea. The island runs roughly four hundred kilometres from the Matochkin Strait north to Cape Zhelaniya, its northern tip. Administratively it belongs to Arkhangelsk Oblast. Its northern reaches lie inside Russian Arctic National Park, established in 2009, which also protects Franz Josef Land further north. The island has no permanent civilian population; weather, military, and park staff are the only year-round presence.
Roughly half of Severny lies under the Severny Island ice cap, the largest ice cap in Europe. The ice runs to the sea along the eastern coast, where outlet glaciers calve directly into the Kara, throwing tabular bergs into water that is frozen for most of the year. The rest of the island is polar desert and rock — moss, lichen, and scattered Arctic willow no taller than a hand. Polar bears den along the coast. Walrus, beluga, and bowhead whales use the strait between the islands.
The interior of Severny remains closed; from 1955 onward the Soviet Union used the archipelago as its main nuclear test range, including the detonation of the fifty-megaton Tsar Bomba over the island on 30 October 1961, the largest nuclear device ever exploded. Visitors today reach the northern coast only by expedition cruise ship, usually in July or August, often as a stop between Franz Josef Land and the Russian mainland. Landings are tightly controlled by Russian Arctic National Park rangers and depend entirely on ice and weather.