Kocaeli Province
— — a working coast that remembers being Nicomedia.
Not only on a wall.
“A province wrapped around the long Gulf of İzmit, where freighters thread between forested hills and a city that was once Diocletian's eastern capital. Inland the country opens into Sapanca Lake and Hereke, the carpet town. The shore is industrial and old at the same time, the way working ports often are along this part of the Marmara. — from the studio
Kocaeli Province, 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.
Kocaeli Province sits on the eastern shore of the Sea of Marmara, about 100 kilometres east of Istanbul, with its capital at İzmit at the head of the Gulf of İzmit. The province covers roughly 3,600 square kilometres and is one of the most densely industrial regions in Turkey, with major automotive, petrochemical, and shipping operations along the gulf. The inland districts rise into the wooded ridges of the Samanlı Mountains.
İzmit was the ancient Nicomedia, founded in 264 BC and made the eastern capital of the Roman Empire by Diocletian in 286 AD. The Hereke district, on the gulf's southern shore, is known across the world for the fine silk-on-silk carpets woven there since the 19th century. Roman, Byzantine, Seljuk, and Ottoman layers remain visible in the older quarters of the city, often inside courtyards a block off the modern shore road.
The Gulf of İzmit reaches roughly 50 kilometres inland and has shaped the province's economy and weather. Sapanca Lake, just east of the city, is a freshwater lake about 16 kilometres long, fringed by hazelnut groves and small lakeside villages. The 1999 İzmit earthquake, magnitude 7.6, struck near the gulf's southern shore and reshaped much of the coast and its building stock; the recovered city is the one most visitors see today.