River Thames
— — the river that made the city around it.
Not only on a wall.
“A river that built a country. The Thames rises in a field at Thames Head in Gloucestershire and runs about 346 kilometres east through Oxford, Reading, and Windsor before it widens into the London tideway and on to the Nore. Locks and weirs keep the upper reaches walkable; the Thames Path follows the bank the whole way from source to the Thames Barrier. The colour the studio reaches for is the slow olive-grey of the water under a low sun, the city's bridges reading dark against it, the long arc that holds everything else in place.
River Thames, 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 Thames is the longest river entirely in England and the second-longest in the United Kingdom, after the Severn. It runs roughly 346 kilometres (215 miles) from its accepted source at Thames Head in the Cotswolds in Gloucestershire to its mouth at the Nore in the North Sea, between Essex and Kent. The drainage basin covers about 12,900 square kilometres and includes Oxford, Reading, Henley, Windsor, and the whole of Greater London. From Teddington Lock east the river is tidal, with a tidal range in central London of around seven metres on a spring tide.
The Thames is one of the most heavily engineered rivers in Europe. Forty-five locks manage the non-tidal stretch from Teddington upstream to Lechlade, raising the river roughly 71 metres over that distance, and the Thames Barrier at Woolwich, completed in 1982, protects central London from North Sea storm surge by closing ten steel gates across the tideway. Water quality has improved markedly since the Thames was declared biologically dead in 1957: more than 125 fish species, including salmon, sea trout, and short-snouted seahorses, have been recorded in the estuary in the decades since the Tideway Tunnel and earlier sewage upgrades took effect.
The Thames Path National Trail follows the river for the full 296 kilometres from the source at Thames Head to the Thames Barrier at Woolwich, opened as a National Trail in 1996. Most of it is flat and walkable in day stages from one riverside pub or town to the next. In central London the river is best read on foot between Westminster and Tower Bridge, with the South Bank giving the open view back across to the City; further west, Richmond and Hampton hold the older river. Henley Royal Regatta, on the reach above Henley Bridge, has run almost every year since 1839.