Congaree National Park
— — the forest the river keeps coming back to.
Not only on a wall.
“Old-growth bottomland forest in the lowlands of South Carolina, where the Congaree River spills its banks four or five times a year and feeds a stand of bald cypress and water tupelo no one has cut. A 2.4-mile boardwalk loops out from the visitor center. In late May, when the synchronous fireflies sync, people sit on the planks and don't say much.
Congaree National Park, 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.
Congaree National Park protects roughly 26,276 acres of old-growth bottomland hardwood forest on the Congaree River floodplain in central South Carolina, about twenty miles southeast of Columbia. Roughly 11,000 acres are uncut primary forest, the largest intact tract of its kind in the United States. The park was designated in 2003, after decades as a national monument. Several of its bald cypresses exceed 130 feet, and the canopy averages among the tallest of any temperate deciduous forest in the world.
The forest is what it is because of the river. The Congaree, joined here by Cedar Creek, floods the floodplain four to ten times a year, leaving silt that has built deep, fertile soils across the bottoms. The water-tupelo and bald-cypress sloughs hold standing water for weeks at a time. The Cedar Creek canoe trail runs about fifteen miles through the swamp; the 2.4-mile Boardwalk Loop crosses the same wetland on raised planks when the river is up over the trails below.
Two windows define the year here. Spring brings the heaviest floods, generally February through April, when the boardwalk floats above brown water and the cypress knees disappear. Late May into mid-June is the synchronous-firefly window: Photuris frontalis flashing in unison for about two weeks, and the park runs a lottery for evening access. Summer is hot and biting; autumn turns the tupelo gold by mid-October. The visitor center, named for journalist Harry Hampton who fought to save the place, stays open every day.