Canyon de Chelly Spider Rock
— — a sandstone spire that holds the canyon's first story.
Not only on a wall.
“The spire stands eight hundred feet above the canyon floor, at the confluence where Canyon de Chelly meets Monument Canyon. In Diné tradition this is the home of Spider Woman, who taught the Navajo to weave. The overlook sits at the end of South Rim Drive, sixteen miles in from the Chinle visitor center. Vendors set out silverwork on blankets in the parking pull-off most mornings. — from the studio
Canyon de Chelly Spider Rock, 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.
Spider Rock is a sandstone spire rising approximately 750 feet from the floor of Canyon de Chelly at its confluence with Monument Canyon, near the center of Canyon de Chelly National Monument in northeastern Arizona. The monument sits entirely on Navajo Nation trust land and is jointly administered by the National Park Service and the Navajo Nation, the only such arrangement in the park system. The spire is sacred in Diné cosmology as the home of Spider Woman, Na'ashjé'íí Asdzáá, who taught weaving.
The spire and the canyon walls are de Chelly Sandstone, a Permian formation laid down by wind in coastal dunes roughly 230 million years ago. The cliffs reach 1,000 feet above the wash at the canyon's deepest point near Spider Rock. The stone holds desert varnish on its sunward faces, the dark streaks formed by mineral-fixing microbes over centuries. The rim sits at 7,000 feet; the canyon floor near the spire at 5,800. The same formation surfaces at Monument Valley and Rainbow Bridge to the northeast.
The Spider Rock Overlook sits at the end of South Rim Drive, sixteen miles from the Canyon de Chelly Visitor Center near Chinle. The rim drives are free and open to private vehicles. Travel below the rim, anywhere on the canyon floor, requires an authorized Navajo guide; the one exception is the White House Ruin Trail. Photography of Diné residents and their homesteads in the canyon is by permission only. Navajo Nation observes Daylight Saving Time, unlike the rest of Arizona.