Odesa
— — a city of acacias, sea fog, and a staircase that disappears.
Not only on a wall.
“Odesa was laid out at the end of the 18th century on a low bluff above the Black Sea, with wide boulevards meant for sea wind and a grid that opens to the harbour. The Potemkin Stairs run from Primorsky Boulevard down to the port in 192 steps, narrowing as they descend so the city above and the sea below each read as larger than they are. Acacia trees line the streets. The fog comes up the steps before the ships do. Inscribed by UNESCO in 2023 as a city worth protecting in wartime.
Odesa, 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.
Odesa sits on the northwest shore of the Black Sea, the largest port city of Ukraine and the administrative seat of Odesa Oblast, with a population of just over one million before 2022. The city was founded by decree of Catherine II in 1794 on the site of the older Ottoman settlement of Hacibey, and grew through the 19th century as a free port serving the grain trade of the Russian Empire. Its historic centre, with the Primorsky Boulevard, the Opera House, and the Potemkin Stairs, was inscribed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in Danger in January 2023.
Most of the historic centre is built from Odesa coquina, a soft fossil-rich limestone quarried directly from beneath the city. The honeycomb of catacombs left by that quarrying runs for an estimated 2,500 kilometres beneath the streets, the longest catacomb system in the world. The Opera House, designed by Viennese architects Fellner and Helmer and completed in 1887, is the architectural anchor of the bluff. The Potemkin Stairs, opened in 1841 and designed by Italian engineer Francesco Boffo, hold 192 steps and ten landings, narrowing from 21 metres at the top to 13 metres at the bottom.
The Black Sea climate gives Odesa long temperate shoulders and a short cold January, with sea fog that climbs the bluff in the mornings of late spring and autumn. Acacia trees were planted along the boulevards in the 19th century and still scent the city in May. The sea is brackish, less saline than the Mediterranean, and the harbour rarely freezes. Locals mark the year by when the acacia blooms, when the figs ripen on courtyard trees, and when the first squalls come down off the steppe in November.