Erzurum
— — the blue the medrese tiles keep in the cold.
Not only on a wall.
“A high city on the eastern Anatolian plateau, sitting near 1,900 metres under the long ridge of Palandöken. Seljuk and Ilkhanid stonework lines the old centre: the twin minarets of the Çifte Minareli Medrese, the carved portal of the Yakutiye Medrese. Winters run long and cold, and the snow holds on the south-facing slopes into April. Tea comes in small tulip glasses.
Erzurum, 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.
Erzurum sits in eastern Anatolia at about 1,900 metres above sea level, the highest of Turkey's major cities and a long-standing crossroads of the Silk Road routes between the Black Sea and Iran. The province is bordered to the south by the Palandöken range, which rises above 3,100 metres and gives the city its winter ski slopes. The historic centre was held in turn by the Saltukids, the Seljuks, the Ilkhanids, and the Ottomans, and the surviving stonework of each period still stands along Cumhuriyet Caddesi.
The Çifte Minareli Medrese, built around 1253 during the late Anatolian Seljuk period, takes its name from the two brick-and-tile minarets that rise above its carved stone portal. Inside, twelve-pointed star medallions and tree-of-life reliefs frame the courtyard. The Yakutiye Medrese, completed in 1310 by the Ilkhanid governor Cemaleddin Hoca Yakut, holds an even denser carved portal under a single fluted minaret faced with turquoise tilework. Both buildings are protected and house museum collections today.
Erzurum has one of the longest and coldest winters of any major Turkish city. Mean January temperatures sit near minus eight Celsius and overnight lows below minus twenty-five are recorded most years. The Palandöken ski area, on the south flank of the city, holds reliable snow from December into April and runs a 12-kilometre descent that is among the longest in Turkey. The high plateau air is dry and thin, and the light reads pale silver against the carved sandstone of the old quarter.