Tekirdağ
— — sunflowers down to the water.
Not only on a wall.
“Tekirdağ sits on the Thracian coast about 135 kilometres west of Istanbul, a working port where the sunflower fields run almost to the harbour wall. The city is known for rakı, for köfte grilled over charcoal, and for the cliffside konak where the exiled Hungarian prince Ferenc Rákóczi lived out his last years. The Marmara is calm here most evenings. From the studio.
Tekirdağ, 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.
Tekirdağ is a port city and provincial capital on the northern shore of the Sea of Marmara, about 135 kilometres west of Istanbul in Turkey's East Thrace region. The wider province holds roughly one million people and the city itself somewhere around 200,000, expanding quickly as Istanbul's industrial belt pushes west. The Greek name Rhaedestus and the older Bisanthe both point to a continuous settlement going back to Thracian and Byzantine periods. Ferries cross the Marmara from Tekirdağ to Marmara Ereğlisi and on toward the Asian shore.
The waterfront's most-visited building is the Rákóczi Museum, an 18th-century wooden konak where the exiled Hungarian prince Ferenc II Rákóczi lived from 1720 until his death in 1735. The house was restored by the Hungarian government in 1932 and reopened as a museum, and it remains one of the strongest Hungarian heritage sites outside Hungary itself. A short walk inland, the Rüstem Pasha Mosque and Caravanserai, completed in 1554 by the Ottoman architect Mimar Sinan, anchors the old commercial quarter.
Tekirdağ Province is one of Turkey's largest sunflower-growing regions, and the fields north of the city bloom from late June into early August. The annual Tekirdağ Cherry Festival in June and the Kiraz and Rakı festivals draw crowds from Istanbul on summer weekends. Tekirdağ köftesi—seasoned ground beef grilled over charcoal—has been protected as a regional speciality, and the city's Mürefte district produces much of Turkey's traditional rakı. Winters along the Marmara are cool and wet but rarely freezing; summers are hot and dry.