Montserrat
— — the mountain that looks cut by hand.
Not only on a wall.
“The strange mountain west of Barcelona. Conglomerate spires the colour of old bread rise straight out of the Catalan plain, a serrated ridge that gives the place its name. High on a shelf sits the Benedictine abbey, home of La Moreneta, the Black Madonna, patroness of Catalonia. The rack railway climbs up through pine and rosemary; from the top the plain runs all the way to the sea on a clear day. — from the studio
Montserrat, 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.
Montserrat is a multi-peaked massif of pink conglomerate rock that rises sharply out of the Llobregat valley about 50 kilometres northwest of Barcelona. The highest summit, Sant Jeroni, reaches 1,236 metres. The Catalan name means "saw-toothed mountain," a literal description of the silhouette: hundreds of vertical pillars eroded out of cemented river pebble over millions of years. The range is protected as Montserrat Natural Park and is one of the most-visited landmarks in Catalonia, reached by car, by the Aeri de Montserrat cable car, or by the Cremallera rack railway from Monistrol.
On a shelf about 720 metres up the south face sits Santa Maria de Montserrat, a Benedictine monastery founded in the eleventh century and continuously inhabited since. It houses La Moreneta, the dark-faced Romanesque carving of the Virgin and Child that has been patroness of Catalonia since 1881. The basilica's boys' choir, the Escolania de Montserrat, is one of the oldest in Europe, with documented training since the thirteenth century, and sings the Salve Regina most days at one in the afternoon. Pilgrims have climbed to the shrine for nearly a thousand years; Ignatius of Loyola left his sword here in 1522.
Most visitors arrive from Barcelona, about an hour by FGC train to Monistrol, then up by Cremallera or cable car. Day pass tickets bundle the train, the rack railway, and the two funiculars on the mountain: Sant Joan, which climbs toward the upper ridge and the network of marked walking trails, and Santa Cova, which drops to the cave below the monastery where the Madonna was reportedly found. Mornings are coolest and least crowded; afternoons can sit under cloud when the plain is clear. The basilica is open to worshippers and visitors, with the queue to touch the Madonna's orb usually shortest before midday.