Teide
— — a peak that holds its own weather.
Not only on a wall.
“The volcano at the centre of Tenerife, and the highest point in Spain. It rises 3,715 metres out of a caldera floor that is itself two thousand metres up, so the cone often stands clear above a sea of cloud below. The summit cable car climbs to within 200 metres of the top. The light on the lava and the late pumice is unlike anywhere else in the Atlantic. People come for sunrise and stay for the stars. from the studio
Teide, 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.
Mount Teide is a stratovolcano on the island of Tenerife in the Canary Islands, an autonomous community of Spain off the northwest coast of Africa. Its summit reaches 3,715 metres above sea level, making it the highest peak in Spain and the third-tallest volcano on Earth measured from its oceanic base. The mountain sits inside the Las Cañadas caldera at the centre of Teide National Park, declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2007. The park covers roughly 19,000 hectares of high-altitude lava field, pumice plain, and endemic Canarian flora.
The summit clears the trade-wind cloud layer that hangs over Tenerife most days, and the result is some of the cleanest air in Europe. The Teide Observatory at 2,390 metres has been one of the world's principal solar observatories since 1964, and the park is internationally certified as a Starlight Reserve. Sunrise and sunset on the summit cone throw long shadows of the mountain itself across the cloud sea below, an effect locally called the shadow of Teide. The pink late light on the pumice fields is the colour the page is trying to hold.
The mountain is reached by car from Puerto de la Cruz in the north or Los Cristianos in the south, both about an hour to the park boundary. The Teleférico del Teide cable car climbs from 2,356 metres to 3,555 metres in roughly eight minutes. Access to the final summit cone above the upper station requires a free permit issued in advance by the national park authority, limited to 200 walkers per day. The cable car can close on short notice when summit winds exceed about 40 kilometres per hour.