Bournemouth
— — seven miles of sand, and a Victorian pier.
Not only on a wall.
“A Victorian seaside town that grew out of a single Georgian cottage in 1810, holding the middle of Poole Bay between the Isle of Purbeck and the chalk stacks of Old Harry Rocks. The cliffs are golden sandstone, the sand below them pale and shelving gently. The pier runs out from the Lower Gardens; the Russell-Cotes Art Gallery sits on the East Cliff in the villa Merton and Annie Russell-Cotes built in the 1890s. A town for the long walk along the prom, a deckchair, an ice cream that lasts the afternoon. from the studio
Bournemouth, 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.
Bournemouth sits on the south coast of England in the unitary authority of Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole within the ceremonial county of Dorset, about 100 miles southwest of London. The town faces Poole Bay across the English Channel, with the Isle of Purbeck rising to the west and the chalk stacks of Old Harry Rocks marking the start of the Jurassic Coast UNESCO World Heritage Site. Bournemouth was founded in 1810 by Captain Lewis Tregonwell, who built the first house on what was then open heathland; the population grew through the Victorian era and now stands at about 195,000 in the town proper.
The cliffs along Poole Bay are golden Eocene sandstones of the Branksome Sand and Boscombe Sand formations, soft enough that the seafront walks are cut as zig-zag paths and serviced by three Victorian cliff lifts — the West, East, and Fisherman's Walk funiculars, all opened between 1908 and 1935. Bournemouth Pier was first built in timber in 1856, replaced in iron and 838 feet of cast-iron piling in 1880, and now stands as the centrepiece of the seafront promenade. The Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum sits on the East Cliff in East Cliff Hall, a villa built by Merton and Annie Russell-Cotes between 1894 and 1901.
The seafront runs roughly seven miles from Hengistbury Head in the east to Sandbanks in the west, paved as a promenade with a parallel land-train and a continuous strip of beach huts, several thousand of which are owned by the council and let by the season. Bournemouth was an early Blue Flag beach in the United Kingdom and has held the award most years since. The town centre rises behind the Lower Gardens — a Victorian pleasure ground that follows the River Bourne up from the pier — and connects to Westover Road, Old Christchurch Road, and the Square. South Western Railway runs direct trains from London Waterloo in under two hours.