Tumacacori mission
— — the white wall the desert keeps.
Not only on a wall.
“A roofless adobe church on the east bank of the Santa Cruz River, forty-five miles south of Tucson. Padre Kino rode in from Sonora in 1691; the present mission was begun a century later and never finished. The nave is open to the sky now. Mesquite shade outside, lime-washed walls inside, the smell of warm stone and dust.
Tumacacori mission, 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.
Tumacácori sits on the east bank of the Santa Cruz River near Tubac, Arizona, about forty-five miles south of Tucson and eighteen miles north of the Nogales border. The site was first visited by the Jesuit priest Eusebio Francisco Kino in January 1691, making it one of the oldest mission sites in the American Southwest. The present church, San José de Tumacácori, was begun by Franciscans around 1800 and abandoned in 1848. The grounds are preserved as Tumacácori National Historical Park, administered by the National Park Service.
The church is built of sun-dried adobe brick on a stone foundation, the walls finished with lime plaster mixed from local limestone. The bell tower was never domed and the sanctuary roof collapsed in the late nineteenth century; the nave has stood open since. The mortuary chapel and granary still hold their original shapes, and the convento survives as low foundation walls. Stabilization work by the Park Service holds the building in arrested ruin rather than rebuilding it, so the texture of two centuries of weather remains visible on every surface.
The park is open daily from nine to five except Thanksgiving and Christmas, with an entrance fee of seven dollars; children fifteen and under enter free. The visitor center on the south side of the grounds holds a small museum of mission-era artifacts and a courtyard garden of pomegranate and quince. A short paved path leads to the church, the cemetery, and the mortuary chapel. The cottonwoods along the Anza Trail riverbank are ten minutes' walk east. Tubac lies three miles north on the Interstate frontage road.