Death Valley National Park
— the basin the sun does not let go of.
Not only on a wall.
“The lowest, hottest, driest place in North America. Badwater Basin lies 282 feet below sea level, and the air at Furnace Creek once reached 134°F. Around the salt flats rise the badlands of Zabriskie Point, the Mesquite Flat dunes, and the long ridge to Telescope Peak above 11,000 feet. Light here is the subject. Sunrise turns the hills cold pink; by noon the colour goes white.
Death Valley 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.
Death Valley National Park straddles the California-Nevada border east of the Sierra Nevada and covers 3.4 million acres, making it the largest national park in the contiguous United States. Within it sit Badwater Basin at 282 feet below sea level, the lowest point in North America, and Telescope Peak at 11,049 feet, less than fifteen miles away. The park was designated a national monument in 1933 and re-designated and enlarged as a national park in 1994 under the California Desert Protection Act, signed by President Clinton.
Light is the subject in Death Valley. At sunrise, Zabriskie Point's badlands turn from grey to cold pink to gold across about twenty minutes. The Artist's Palette road, on the east face of the Black Mountains, holds pastels of pink, green and lavender from oxidised mineral salts in the volcanic ash. The Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes near Stovepipe Wells throw long crescent shadows in the first and last hour of the day. Light pollution is so low the park holds a Gold Tier International Dark Sky designation.
The park is one of the largest International Dark Sky Parks in the United States and one of the quietest in the system. Annual rainfall at Furnace Creek averages around two inches; in dry years there is none. On July 10, 1913, the Furnace Creek weather station recorded 134°F, still the highest reliable air temperature ever measured on Earth. Wind, raven, the tick of cooling rock; the sound floor is low. Most of the roughly one million annual visitors come between November and March, when daytime temperatures hold near 70°F.