Mesa
— — the desert that keeps a city quiet.
Not only on a wall.
“A city the size of Atlanta that somehow feels lower and slower, sitting on a wide shelf of Sonoran Desert east of Phoenix. The light here is not subtle; it bleaches the saguaros at noon and turns the Superstition Mountains the colour of a struck match around six. The studio reads Mesa as a place that learned to keep its voice down because the desert is already loud enough. — from the studio
Mesa, 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.
Mesa sits on a Sonoran Desert plateau in Maricopa County, Arizona, immediately east of Phoenix and Tempe. It is Arizona's third-largest city, with about 504,000 residents as of the 2020 census, and one of the largest U.S. cities most outsiders cannot place on a map. The Salt River runs along the northern edge, and the Superstition Mountains rise to the east. The name is Spanish for table, after the flat-topped land Mormon settlers found when they arrived in 1878.
The Sonoran is the only desert on earth where the saguaro grows, and around Mesa it grows in stands thick enough to read as a forest from a low ridge. A mature saguaro can reach 12 metres and live 150 years; the first arm usually does not appear until the plant is 50 to 70 years old. Late afternoon turns the cactus skin from sage to copper, and the Superstition Mountains pick up the same colour about twenty minutes before the sun drops behind the South Mountains.
Usery Mountain Regional Park, on the city's northeast edge, holds 29 km of trails through Sonoran Desert with the Wind Cave Trail climbing to a shaded pocket of the Pass Mountain ridge. The Mesa Arizona Temple, dedicated in 1927, is one of the oldest LDS temples outside Utah and sits at the centre of a public garden that draws large crowds for its Christmas lights. Best visiting window is late October through April; summer afternoons regularly clear 42°C.