Colorado State Capitol dome Denver Metro Ceramic Art Tile
— Colorado gold on Colorado granite.
Not only on a wall.
“The Capitol stands on the rise above Civic Center Park, looking west to the Front Range. The dome was first gilded in 1908, with gold leaf donated by Colorado mine operators, and it has been regilded several times since. On the west steps, three different stones have been cut at three different decades to mark exactly one mile above sea level. The surveys keep catching up to themselves. From the right block on Colfax, late afternoon catches the dome and holds it.
Colorado State Capitol dome Denver Metro Ceramic Art Tile, 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.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
The place, in three passes.
The Capitol sits at 200 East Colfax Avenue, on the rise above Civic Center Park in downtown Denver. Construction ran from 1886 to 1901, to a Neoclassical design by Elijah E. Myers, who also designed the Texas and Michigan capitols. The dome rises about 272 feet above the ground floor and was first gilded in 1908 with roughly 200 troy ounces of gold leaf, donated by Colorado's mining industry. The building has been regilded several times since, most recently in the 2013-2014 restoration. Three stones on the west steps mark one mile above sea level: a brass plate cut on the 13th step in 1909, a corrected marker on the 18th step after a 1969 survey, and a third marker recut on the 13th step in 2003.
The exterior is Colorado white granite from the Aberdeen quarry near Gunnison, chosen after a long political fight over which Colorado stone the Capitol should rest on. The wainscoting inside is Beulah red marble, often called Colorado rose onyx, quarried from a small deposit at Beulah, Colorado. The seam at Beulah was small, and the Capitol commissioners specified enough material to finish the interior. By 1898 the deposit was exhausted, and no commercial source of Colorado rose onyx has been found since. The floors are Yule marble from the town of Marble, the same quarry that later supplied the statue at the Lincoln Memorial and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
The Capitol is open to the public on weekdays at no charge. Free guided tours of the legislative chambers run on the hour Monday through Friday and last roughly 45 minutes, and a separate dome tour climbs to the open-air viewing gallery near the top of the building. The dome climb is 99 steps from the top of the elevator landing to the gallery, which looks west over Civic Center Park to the Front Range and east across the plains. The address is 200 East Colfax Avenue, two blocks east of the Civic Center light rail station and three blocks south of the 16th Street pedestrian mall.