Charleston
— — pastel houses holding the harbour light.
Not only on a wall.
“A peninsula city at the meeting of two tidal rivers on the South Carolina coast, where the Ashley and the Cooper come together to make the harbour. The old streets south of Broad keep their cobblestones and their tall side-porched houses, painted the soft chalks and pinks that catch the sea light. Live oaks lean across the lanes with Spanish moss in long grey rags.
Charleston, 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.
Charleston sits on a narrow peninsula on the South Carolina coast, where the Ashley and Cooper rivers come together to form Charleston Harbor, which opens to the Atlantic past Fort Sumter. The city was founded as Charles Towne in 1670 and is the oldest in South Carolina. The historic district covers roughly the lower half of the peninsula, with the Battery and White Point Garden at the southern tip. The greater Charleston region, known as the Lowcountry, runs from the sea islands to the inland tidal marshes.
Charleston's historic district preserves one of the largest concentrations of pre-1860 architecture in the United States. The signature form is the Charleston single house, one room wide, set sideways to the street, with a long covered porch called a piazza opening to the south or west to catch the harbour breeze. Rainbow Row, a curve of thirteen pastel Georgian merchants' houses along East Bay Street, was rescued and repainted in the 1930s and 1940s. The Battery seawall, begun in the 1750s and rebuilt after hurricanes, holds the southern edge against the harbour.
The Lowcountry climate is a marine subtropical one, with hot wet summers, mild winters, and a long shoulder of warm grey weather on either side. Average July highs reach the upper 80s Fahrenheit with humidity above 80 percent, and afternoon thunderstorms roll in off the harbour through the season. Live oaks draped with Spanish moss hold the side streets and the plantation drives at Middleton Place and Magnolia, where the moss filters the light into the soft green the painters call Charleston green. The salt smell off the marshes carries inland on every breeze.