San Pedro Apostle mission Cosanti
— the bronze that holds the desert's breath.
Not only on a wall.
“Paolo Soleri's studio at the edge of Paradise Valley, where earth-cast concrete apses rise from the ground like the desert decided to keep them. The bronze windbells cool overnight and ring all morning. Visitors wander the courtyards without much being said. The sound is what people remember.
San Pedro Apostle mission Cosanti, 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.
Cosanti sits on roughly five acres in Paradise Valley, north of Phoenix, founded in 1956 by the Italian-American architect Paolo Soleri after he left Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West. The compound is built from earth-cast concrete: silt mounds are sculpted, poured, then excavated to reveal vaulted apses and half-domes. Soleri died in 2013; the Cosanti Foundation continues casting bronze and ceramic windbells on the site. Cosanti was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2017 and remains the working studio Soleri began nearly seventy years ago.
The signature surface here is earth-cast concrete. A mound of native silt is shaped and carved, concrete is poured over it, and the earth is dug out from beneath once the slab cures. The interior surface keeps the imprint of the soil: chisel marks, root traces, the slow rake of a trowel. Many panels are tinted with iron oxide so the apses read closer to the surrounding ground than to a built wall. Soleri developed the technique in the late 1950s and refined it at Cosanti for the rest of his life.
Cosanti sits at 6433 East Doubletree Ranch Road in Paradise Valley, about twenty minutes from central Phoenix. The on-site gallery sells the bronze and ceramic Soleri Windbells whose proceeds fund the foundation's work. Bronze pours are scheduled at the studio and can sometimes be watched from a viewing area. The compound is small enough to walk through in an hour and slow enough to spend an afternoon. Visitors should check the Cosanti Foundation website for current hours and pour days before driving out.