Los Angeles
— — a city that ends at the ocean.
Not only on a wall.
“From Griffith Observatory the basin runs all the way to the water. Founded by Spanish settlers in 1781 as El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles, the city now spreads across more than twelve hundred square kilometres of valleys, hills, and shoreline. The light here flattens at noon and warms by four. — from the studio
Los Angeles, 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.
Los Angeles is the largest city in California and the second-largest in the United States, with around 3.8 million residents in the city proper and roughly thirteen million across the metropolitan area. It sits in the Los Angeles Basin between the Pacific Ocean and the San Gabriel Mountains, founded on September 4, 1781 by forty-four Spanish settlers as El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles. The city covers 1,302 square kilometres and includes coastline at Venice and San Pedro and ridgelines above 500 metres in Griffith Park.
Photographers and cinematographers have worked the Los Angeles light for more than a century. The basin's marine layer rolls in most mornings from May through August, burning off by late morning to leave the long flat afternoons the studios were built around. Late autumn brings the cleanest air and the longest views, when the San Gabriels stand sharp against the eastern sky from Griffith Observatory, which opened in 1935 on the south slope of Mount Hollywood thanks to Griffith J. Griffith's bequest.
The city stretches, and a single visit cannot cover it. Downtown, Hollywood, Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, and the South Bay are each their own districts with their own rhythm. Public transit has grown through Metro Rail's six lines, but most visitors still rent a car. The Getty Center and the Getty Villa are free with paid parking, the Griffith Observatory is free, and the Hollywood Sign is best viewed from Lake Hollywood Park rather than approached on foot from the trailheads.