Cholla cactus in backlit sun
— — the hour the spines turn to fur.
Not only on a wall.
“Teddy bear cholla in the Sonoran Desert, photographed twice a day. At sunrise and the last hour before sunset, low-angle light catches the silver spines and the cactus appears to be on fire. Up close the spines hook the skin and break off at the touch. The colour belongs only to those two hours; the rest of the day the plant reads grey-green and quiet. from the studio
Cholla cactus in backlit sun, 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.
Teddy bear cholla, Cylindropuntia bigelovii, grows across the lower Sonoran Desert in southern and western Arizona, southeastern California, and northwest Mexico. In Arizona the densest stands occur in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, the Sonoran Desert National Monument, and the Tucson Mountain district of Saguaro National Park. The plant prefers rocky bajadas between roughly one hundred and three thousand feet and grows to about five feet tall, branching into the dense candelabra silhouette that gives the species its common name.
What looks like soft fur is a dense armour of straw-coloured spines, each tipped with a microscopic barbed sheath. When the sun drops near the horizon, light passes through that translucent sheath layer and diffracts inside it, so the plant reads white-gold against the darker desert behind. The effect peaks in the first and last hour of daylight, especially from December through March, when the sun never climbs high enough to wash the spines out.
Teddy bear cholla rarely sets viable seed; it propagates almost entirely by clones. Segments break off at the lightest contact, hook into the fur of a passing animal or the cuff of a pant leg, drop after a short ride, and root where they land, which is why some stands appear to march downslope. The local nickname jumping cholla comes from how readily the joints attach. Removing a stuck segment is done with a pocket comb, not bare fingers.