Canyon de Chelly White House Ruin
— — a white-plastered room held in the cliff for a thousand years.
Not only on a wall.
“A cliff dwelling built by Ancestral Puebloan hands between roughly 1060 and 1275 CE, in two parts: a stone village on the canyon floor and an upper alcove room whose white-plastered wall gave the site its name. The trail down from the South Rim is the only path in Canyon de Chelly that does not require a Navajo guide. Two and a half miles round trip, six hundred feet down and back. — from the studio
Canyon de Chelly White House Ruin, 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.
White House Ruin sits below the South Rim of Canyon de Chelly National Monument in northeastern Arizona, approximately six miles east of the visitor center near Chinle. The dwelling was built in two parts by Ancestral Puebloan, or Anasazi, people between roughly 1060 and 1275 CE, with about eighty rooms in the lower village on the canyon floor and a smaller alcove dwelling above. The site takes its English name from the long white-plastered wall in the upper room.
The cliff is de Chelly Sandstone, a Permian eolian deposit roughly 230 million years old. The alcove that holds the upper rooms formed by spalling, the slow flaking of sandstone beds under the weight of water seeping along bedding planes. The plaster on the upper wall is mud-and-gypsum and has held its colour against the dark desert varnish of the cliff for centuries. The Ancestral Puebloan masons used hand-shaped sandstone blocks set in mud mortar with juniper-beam lintels above the doorways.
The White House Ruin Trail is the only Canyon de Chelly trail open to visitors without an authorized Navajo guide. It descends 600 feet from the South Rim overlook over 2.5 miles round trip, switchbacks through two short tunnels, and reaches the canyon floor near the Chinle Wash. Visitors may approach the lower village but not enter the rooms or climb to the upper dwelling. The trail closes when the wash runs high after summer monsoon rain. Navajo Nation observes Daylight Saving Time.