Leeds
— — Victorian arcades, kept polished for a century and a half.
Not only on a wall.
“A wool town that grew into a city on the back of cloth, then coal, then law and finance. The Victoria Quarter still keeps its mosaic floors and stained-glass canopies from the 1900 build. The Town Hall, by Cuthbert Brodrick, has stood at the top of The Headrow since 1858. Below it, the Leeds-Liverpool Canal threads west out of the city toward the Pennines. On match days the streets carry the white of Leeds United.
Leeds, 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.
Leeds sits in West Yorkshire, in the north of England, on the River Aire about 65 kilometres northeast of Manchester and 270 kilometres north of London. The city proper holds roughly 810,000 people, with around 1.9 million across the wider West Yorkshire built-up area, making it the largest urban centre in Yorkshire and one of the most important commercial hubs outside the south of England. The city grew from a medieval market town into a Victorian industrial centre on the strength of the wool trade, then financial and legal services. The Pennines rise immediately to the west.
The Leeds Town Hall, designed by Cuthbert Brodrick and opened in 1858 by Queen Victoria, stands at the top of The Headrow with a 225-foot clock tower and ten Corinthian columns across its front. A short walk away, the Victoria Quarter, a covered shopping arcade built between 1898 and 1900 by Frank Matcham, keeps its original mosaic floors and the largest stained-glass window in Britain. Kirkgate Market, opened in 1857 and rebuilt to its current iron-and-glass form in 1904, is the largest covered market in Europe and was the birthplace of Marks & Spencer in 1884.
Leeds sits at the centre of one of England's strongest cultural circuits. The Royal Armouries Museum, on the south bank of the River Aire, holds the national collection of arms and armour, transferred from the Tower of London in 1996. Leeds Art Gallery on The Headrow holds one of the finest collections of twentieth-century British art outside London, including works by Henry Moore, who studied at Leeds School of Art before 1921. Opera North performs at the Leeds Grand Theatre, and the Leeds International Piano Competition has run every three years since 1963.