Bull Ring
— a silver curve, a bronze bull, a medieval church.
Not only on a wall.
“In central Birmingham, the Bull Ring is a thousand years of market in a few city blocks. The Selfridges building wears 15,000 anodised aluminium discs in a curve no other building has tried. Below it, St Martin's church holds the older line. A bronze bull guards the entrance to the markets, polished by hands.
Bull Ring, 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.
The Bull Ring sits in central Birmingham, between New Street Station and the Digbeth district, on a site that has held a market since at least the twelfth century. The modern Bullring shopping centre opened in 2003 on the footprint of an earlier 1960s development. The Church of St Martin in the Bull Ring, a Grade II* listed medieval parish church remodelled in 1873 by J.A. Chatwin, stands at the south end. The whole site lies a short walk from Moor Street Station and the Custard Factory in Digbeth.
The Selfridges building, completed in 2003 to a design by Future Systems, is sheathed in roughly 15,000 anodised aluminium discs on a blue background, set onto a fluid concrete shell that has no straight wall. The form was modelled on a Paco Rabanne sequinned dress and on biological cell structures. St Martin's church, three centuries older in its present footprint, is red Warwickshire sandstone with a 200-foot spire. The bronze statue of the bull at the eastern entrance, by Laurence Broderick, was installed in 2003 and weighs about six tonnes.
The Bullring shopping centre is open daily, generally from 09:00 or 10:00 until 20:00, with shorter hours on Sundays. Selfridges keeps its own slightly longer schedule. The markets (Indoor, Open, and Rag) operate on most weekdays from early morning. New Street Station sits two minutes' walk to the north-west, and Moor Street Station opens directly onto the site. The Bull statue at the eastern entrance is the most photographed object on the site, polished to a sheen by the hands of passers-by.