Stavropol
— — a city built on a hill of grass and wind.
Not only on a wall.
“A southern Russian city set on the Stavropol Upland, six hundred metres above the steppe, where the wind moves through wheat for most of the year. It began as one of Catherine the Great's frontier fortresses in 1777, a single hill called Krepostnaya Gora that still holds the oldest stones. The name means city of the cross. From the central park you can see the long flat horizon and, on a clear winter day, the distant ridge of the Caucasus. — from the studio
Stavropol, 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.
Stavropol is the administrative centre of Stavropol Krai in the North Caucasus Federal District of southern Russia, with a population near 450,000 at the 2021 census. The city sits at roughly 600 metres above sea level on the Stavropol Upland, the high tableland that separates the Kuban basin from the Caspian lowlands. It was founded in 1777 by order of Catherine the Great as one of the Azov-Mozdok fortified line of ten forts, set on the hill now called Krepostnaya Gora, the Fortress Hill, which still holds the remnant gate of the original stone wall.
The Stavropol Upland rises gradually from the Sea of Azov to the foothills of the Greater Caucasus, and Stavropol sits near its highest pass. The elevation gives the city a markedly drier, cooler climate than the steppe below, with mean January temperatures near minus four Celsius and a long windy spring. On clear winter days the southern horizon shows the snow line of the Caucasus ridge, including 5,642-metre Mount Elbrus about 200 kilometres south. The local soil is the thick black chernozem that makes the krai one of the largest grain producers in Russia.
Stavropol observes its annual City Day on the third Saturday of September, the founding-week tradition kept since the bicentennial in 1977. The day centres on Krepostnaya Gora, the Fortress Hill, where the original 1777 wall fragment and a 1976 monument to the founding Cossacks stand above the city. The adjacent Kazansky Cathedral, rebuilt in 2010 on its 1847 footprint, holds the day's main service. The boulevard along Karl Marx Avenue closes to traffic, and the city's brass and choral ensembles play down its length until dark.