Grand Teton National Park
— — mountains that rise straight out of the meadow.
Not only on a wall.
“The Tetons jump from the sage flat without foothills, twelve peaks over twelve thousand feet stacked in a 40-mile wall on the west side of Jackson Hole. The Snake River cuts through the valley below, bending at Oxbow where moose feed at first light. The Mormon-Row barns hold their place against the Grand. It is the cleanest line in the American West.
Grand Teton 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.
Grand Teton National Park covers about 310,000 acres in northwest Wyoming, immediately south of Yellowstone and connected to it by the John D. Rockefeller Jr. Memorial Parkway. The Teton Range rises directly from the floor of Jackson Hole without intervening foothills — the Grand Teton itself reaches 13,775 feet, the highest of twelve summits above 12,000 feet. The park was established in 1929 and expanded in 1950 after John D. Rockefeller Jr. quietly bought up valley ranchlands to donate to the federal government, a story still told in the visitor centre at Moose.
The Tetons face east. The first ten minutes of sunlight catch the granite of the upper peaks while the valley below stays in shadow — the reason every photograph of Mormon Row and Oxbow Bend is taken before seven in the morning. The pull-off at Schwabacher Landing, two miles in off Route 191, gives a still reflection of the range on a windless dawn. The Snake River braids through stands of cottonwood here. By eight the light has flattened, the wind has come up off the lake, and the photographers are already at breakfast in Moose.
The park keeps four real seasons. Late May through mid-June brings the highest water on the Snake and elk calves on the sage flats. July and August are the working window for high routes like the Garnet Canyon approach to the Grand. The second half of September turns the aspens on Signal Mountain a clean gold and brings the elk rut, audible from the road at dusk. Winter closes the inner park road from November through April; the moose move down to the river bottoms, and the Tetons sit unphotographed by everyone except the cross-country skiers.