Glasgow
— — sandstone the rain has been working on for a century.
Not only on a wall.
“Built in red and blonde sandstone along the lower Clyde. The tenements run for miles, four storeys of bay windows and chimneys, and the river is quieter now than when the yards launched a ship a week. The Mackintosh building of the Glasgow School of Art still rises above Sauchiehall Street, under careful restoration. Rain most days, and a softer dusk than the latitude would suggest.
Glasgow, 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.
Glasgow is the largest city in Scotland, set on the River Clyde about 65 kilometres west of Edinburgh. Roughly 635,000 people live within the city boundary and 1.8 million across the wider conurbation. A medieval settlement grew here around the cathedral founded for Saint Mungo in the twelfth century; the University of Glasgow followed in 1451, the fourth-oldest English-speaking university in the world. From the eighteenth century the city built itself on tobacco, cotton, and then the shipyards of the Clyde.
The city is built almost entirely of sandstone, red from the Locharbriggs and Corncockle quarries, blonde from Bishopbriggs and Giffnock, quarried within a hundred kilometres and lifted into the long ranks of Victorian tenements between roughly 1860 and 1914. The Mackintosh Building of the Glasgow School of Art, completed in 1909, remains the most famous single work in the city, currently undergoing careful restoration after a 2018 fire. The cathedral of St. Mungo still holds the oldest stones, some dating from the thirteenth century.
The Clyde rises in the Lowther Hills and reaches the city after about 130 kilometres, widening into the tidal estuary that built modern Glasgow. Between roughly 1850 and 1914 the yards on its banks launched a substantial share of the world's shipping, including the Cutty Sark, the Queen Mary, and the QE2. The river is quieter now: most of the yards are closed, the Finnieston crane stands as a monument, and the bank is rebuilt as walkways, the Riverside Museum, and the SEC Armadillo.