Chicago
— — a skyline rising out of a lake.
Not only on a wall.
“A city on a freshwater coast, the way the Atlantic cities aren't. The lake reads as an ocean and the wind comes off it cold enough to set the day's tempo. Steel and glass stand in the order the river drew them, the elevated train hums through the Loop, and the light off the water turns the windows gold an hour before the sun is gone.
Chicago, 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.
The third-largest city in the United States, on the southwest shore of Lake Michigan. The population sits near 2.7 million within city limits and roughly 9.4 million across the metropolitan area. Chicago was incorporated as a town in 1833 on land the Potawatomi had used as a portage between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi watershed. The Chicago River was reversed in 1900 by the Sanitary and Ship Canal so the city's sewage flowed south toward the Mississippi rather than into its drinking water at the lake.
The skyline is the second city's first art form. The Home Insurance Building of 1885 by William Le Baron Jenney is considered the first steel-frame skyscraper. The Willis Tower, finished in 1973 by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, held the world record for twenty-five years at 442 metres to roof. Daniel Burnham's 1909 Plan of Chicago set the lakefront aside as public ground and shaped the boulevards. The grid runs north-south and east-west with such conviction the river had to be reversed to keep it clean.
Lake Michigan reads as an ocean from the shore. It covers about 58,000 square kilometres, runs 494 kilometres north to south, and reaches 281 metres at its deepest point. Chicago's lakefront keeps 42 kilometres of public shoreline, a result of Daniel Burnham's insistence that the water belong to everyone. The lake sets the city's weather. Cold off-lake winds in spring keep the beaches empty into June, and warm air over cold water builds the haze that softens the skyline on summer afternoons.