Idlib
— — a city the olive country gathers around.
Not only on a wall.
“A provincial capital on a low plateau of red earth, surrounded by some of the oldest olive country in the world. Stone houses with shallow domes, a Friday bazaar, the long ridge of Jebel al-Zawiya rising to the south. The Dead Cities — abandoned Byzantine villages of cut limestone — sit scattered across the surrounding hills, some still half-roofed after fifteen centuries. The countryside reads ochre and silver: ochre for the soil, silver for the undersides of olive leaves moving in afternoon wind. from the studio
Idlib, 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.
Idlib is the capital of Idlib Governorate in northwestern Syria, sitting at about 446 metres elevation on a plateau roughly 60 kilometres southwest of Aleppo and 50 kilometres east of the Turkish border at Bab al-Hawa. The pre-war population was near 165,000. The surrounding countryside is among the most productive olive-growing regions in the Levant, and Idlib's bazaars have long traded in olive oil, soap, and figs. The Idlib Museum, before the war, held one of the most important collections of cuneiform tablets recovered from nearby Ebla.
The countryside around Idlib holds the Dead Cities — roughly 700 abandoned Byzantine and late-Roman villages of cut limestone scattered across the Jebel Sem'an, Jebel Halaqa, and Jebel al-Zawiya. UNESCO inscribed them as the Ancient Villages of Northern Syria in 2011. Many still carry intact churches, oil presses, and tomb facades dating from the 1st to 7th centuries. The Church of Saint Simeon Stylites, north of the city, was the largest church in the world when completed in 490 CE. The stone weathers to a pale honey colour in the afternoon light.
Idlib's climate is Mediterranean: hot dry summers and cool wet winters, with most of the year's rainfall between November and March. The olive harvest runs from October into early December and is the season the countryside is most alive — families spread tarps under the trees and beat the branches with long poles. Almond blossom comes in February, anemones and poppies through March and April. Summer temperatures climb past 35°C; the plateau cools sharply after sundown.