New Taipei
— — the lantern light just before it lets go.
Not only on a wall.
“The city that holds Taipei in its arms. Jiufen's tea-house steps at dusk, Pingxi's sky lanterns rising over the rail line, the wind-carved sandstone heads at Yehliu, the hot-spring towns above Wulai. A place that goes from coast to ridgeline in an hour. The old roads still climb the same way they did when the gold ran out. — from the studio
New Taipei, 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.
New Taipei is the special municipality that rings Taipei City on every side, stretching from the north coast at Yehliu and Tamsui down into the forested ridges above Wulai. With roughly 4 million residents across 29 districts, it is Taiwan's most populous administrative division. The old mining hill-town of Jiufen sits in Ruifang District, the sky-lantern festival town of Pingxi a few rail stops further inland, and the Tamsui River carries the boundary out to the Taiwan Strait.
Light in New Taipei is two things at once. On the coast, the long blue dusk over Tamsui's harbour, where the ferry to Bali still runs as it has since the Qing trading days. Up at Jiufen, light is red paper lanterns above the A-Mei Tea House, switched on around 5 p.m. and reflected wet in the stone steps after every rain. Pingxi adds a third register: the slow climb of paper lanterns, lit by candle, released by the thousand on the fifteenth day of the lunar new year.
Most visitors reach New Taipei from Taipei Main Station: the MRT runs to Tamsui in 35 minutes, the Pingxi Line branches east from Ruifang, and Jiufen is a one-hour bus from Zhongxiao Fuxing. The Yehliu Geopark on the north coast charges a small entrance fee and is best walked early, before the tour coaches arrive from Taipei. The big lantern release happens once a year at the Lantern Festival; small releases run nightly in Pingxi Old Street.