Saint Martin's Church
— — the light Giacometti put into the glass.
Not only on a wall.
“The late-Gothic parish church above the cobbled lanes of Chur, oldest town north of the Alps. The tower clock still keeps the hour for the Bündner valleys below. Inside, the windows are Augusto Giacometti's, set during the First World War — blues and ochres that wake up by mid-morning and hold the nave until the afternoon light moves on. Nobody hurries through. The pews are dark, the stone is cool, the silence between the bells is part of the building. from the studio
Saint Martin's Church, 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.
St. Martin's Church (Martinskirche) sits above the medieval old town of Chur, the cantonal capital of Graubünden and one of the oldest continuously settled places north of the Alps. The current late-Gothic three-aisled hall was completed in 1491 after a fire destroyed the earlier Romanesque building, and the slender tower was raised in 1716. The church has been the principal Reformed parish of Chur since the Reformation reached Graubünden in 1526. It stands at roughly 593 metres, a short walk from the Plessur and the cathedral hill.
The three chancel windows are by Augusto Giacometti, the Graubünden-born painter and cousin of the sculptor Alberto. He installed them in 1919, near the end of the First World War, working in deep cobalt, ochre and rose. The composition reads almost abstractly until the eye finds the figures of the Nativity, the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. The glass turns on slowly in the morning and burns through the nave around eleven, when the Alpine sun clears the rooftops on the south side of the old town.
The church is open daily, free of charge, with the hours posted at the south door; services are in German. The old town of Chur is car-free, so visitors arrive on foot from the station, about ten minutes uphill past the Obertor gate. The town itself is reachable by direct hourly trains from Zürich (around 75 minutes) on the SBB network, and is the launching point for the Rhaetian Railway lines to St. Moritz and the Bernina. Photography is permitted; flash is asked to be kept off near the windows.