Gangneung
— — the cold green sea after a winter dawn.
Not only on a wall.
“A small city on Korea's east coast, where the Taebaek Mountains step down to the Sea of Japan and the trains from Seoul arrive in just under two hours. Gangneung is known for pine forests along the shore, a coffee street that grew up around a quiet beach, and a Confucian house older than most of the country around it.
Gangneung, 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.
Gangneung sits in Gangwon Province on Korea's east coast, about 165 kilometres east of Seoul across the Taebaek range. The city anchors Gyeongpo Beach and the Anmok coffee street and includes Ojukheon, the sixteenth-century Confucian house where the scholar Yi I and his mother, the painter Shin Saimdang, were born. Modern access tightened in 2017 when KTX high-speed service opened ahead of the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, putting Seoul within two hours. The Gangneung Danoje Festival, held each lunar fifth month, was inscribed by UNESCO in 2008.
The East Sea, called the Sea of Japan on most foreign maps, runs deep and cold along Gangneung's shore. Gyeongpo Beach stretches about 1.8 kilometres of pale sand backed by a pine windbreak planted to slow the salt air. Just inland, Gyeongpo Lake holds a thin band of freshwater separated from the sea by a sandbar, used by migrating swans and ducks in winter. Anmok Beach, two kilometres south, is smaller and is where the city's coffee street found its anchor view.
The Danoje festival reshapes the city for a month around the lunar fifth month, usually late May or June. It begins with the brewing of sacred liquor at Chilsadang shrine and closes with shaman rituals, mask dances, and a market that spreads through the old town. Winter brings a different kind of attention: the ice arenas built for the 2018 Olympics still host figure skating and curling, and the East Sea coast here is the first part of Korea the morning sun reaches. New Year crowds gather at Jeongdongjin to watch it.