Tver
— — the river finding its first big city.
Not only on a wall.
“The Volga is still narrow at Tver, still finding itself, before it widens into the river the rest of Russia knows. The city sits at the joining of three rivers: the Volga, the Tvertsa, the T'maka. The embankment is lined in pastel facades the empire left behind. Trains to St. Petersburg pass through without stopping.
Tver, 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.
Tver sits at the confluence of the Volga, Tvertsa, and T'maka rivers in western Russia, roughly 180 km northwest of Moscow on the M10 highway and the October Railway between the capital and St. Petersburg. The city was founded in the 12th century and served as the seat of the Grand Duchy of Tver, a serious rival to Moscow until 1485. The Imperial Travel Palace, built in the 1760s for Catherine the Great, anchors the central embankment above the Volga.
The Volga at Tver is still in its upper reach, narrow enough to read across, before it turns southeast toward Yaroslavl and the long descent to the Caspian. The river is held by a granite-and-balustrade embankment laid out in the 18th century after a fire reshaped the city. The Afanasy Nikitin monument stands on the left bank, marking the Tver-born merchant who reached India in 1468 and wrote A Journey Beyond Three Seas.
Tver shows differently across the year. Winters are long; January averages around minus eight Celsius and the embankment goes quiet under snow. Spring breaks late, with the Volga ice usually clearing by mid-April. Summer brings river swimming and the brief, intense light of latitude 56 north. Autumn is the photographer's season: the pastel facades along Stepan Razin embankment hold the low Russian light through October.