Fort Worth
— — where the West begins.
Not only on a wall.
“Thirty miles west of Dallas, Fort Worth still calls itself Cowtown. The Stockyards run a working cattle drive twice a day down Exchange Avenue, longhorns and all. The Kimbell Art Museum sits a few miles south, Louis Kahn's last finished building, its vaulted concrete bays full of north light. Two cities, one place.
Fort Worth, 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.
Fort Worth sits in north-central Texas on the Trinity River, about 30 miles west of Dallas, with a city population of roughly 960,000, the twelfth-largest in the United States. Founded in 1849 as a U.S. Army outpost on the bluff above the river, it grew through the late nineteenth century as the last stop on the Chisholm Trail before the Kansas railheads. The city's motto, Where the West Begins, dates to a 1893 line by journalist Bill Paddock.
The Kimbell Art Museum, designed by Louis Kahn and opened in 1972, was the architect's last completed building. Its sixteen parallel cycloid vaults pull north light through a slot at the apex of each bay; the natural light is the design's defining feature. The Modern Art Museum next door, by Tadao Ando, opened in 2002 over a long reflecting pond. Both sit in the Cultural District, about three miles west of downtown along Camp Bowie Boulevard.
The Stockyards National Historic District runs the cattle drive twice daily at 11:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. along Exchange Avenue, weather permitting. Admission to the district is free; the Cowboy Hall of Fame and the Livestock Exchange Building sit within a two-block walk. Sundance Square downtown gives a different rhythm: restored brick blocks and outdoor concerts. The Cultural District museums sit four miles west; allow most of an afternoon for the Kimbell alone.