Death Valley
— — the lowest, hottest, driest ground in the country.
Not only on a wall.
“A long graben between two ranges in eastern California, dropping to 282 feet below sea level at Badwater Basin. The salt flats read white at noon and pink at dusk. Furnace Creek holds the highest air temperature ever reliably recorded on Earth, 134 degrees Fahrenheit, set in July of 1913. In spring, when the rains have come right, the desert floor turns gold with wildflowers for a few weeks before the heat closes the year again. Park rangers ask you to carry water and to drive in the morning. from the studio
Death Valley, 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.
Death Valley is a long, narrow graben in eastern California, running roughly north-south between the Amargosa Range and the Panamint Range. Badwater Basin, at 282 feet below sea level, is the lowest point in North America. The valley sits within Death Valley National Park, established in 1994 and covering about 3.4 million acres across California and Nevada, which makes it the largest national park in the contiguous United States. Telescope Peak rises to 11,049 feet on the western wall, so the relief between the basin floor and the highest summit is more than two vertical miles.
On 10 July 1913 a thermometer at Furnace Creek read 134 degrees Fahrenheit, or 56.7 Celsius. The World Meteorological Organization recognises this as the highest air temperature reliably recorded anywhere on Earth. The valley is hot because it is low, walled by high ranges that block coastal air, and floored by dark salt and rock that absorb sunlight all day. Summer overnight lows in the basin often stay above 100 Fahrenheit. The Park Service asks summer visitors to stay near vehicles, carry at least a gallon of water per person per day, and travel before mid-morning.
The painting reads winter and early spring. From November through March daytime highs in the basin run a comfortable 60 to 80 Fahrenheit, and clear nights drop into the 40s. After a wet winter the valley floor can flush with desert gold, sand verbena, and notch-leaved phacelia in March and early April, a bloom that visibly lasts only a few weeks. The wildflower windows of 1998, 2005, and 2016 drew crowds for what locals called the super blooms. The rest of the year, the valley keeps its better-known palette: salt white, basalt black, and the long red of late light.