Mount Mansfield
— — a long ridge that reads as a face turned to the sky.
Not only on a wall.
“The highest mountain in Vermont, a long ridge that the early settlers read as a face — forehead, nose, chin — turned toward the sky. The summit holds a small arctic-alpine tundra, one of the only patches in New England. The Long Trail crosses the top. Stowe sits at the foot of the eastern flank.
Mount Mansfield, 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.
Mount Mansfield rises to 4,395 feet (1,340 m), the highest summit in Vermont, in the spine of the Green Mountains between Lamoille and Chittenden counties. The ridge runs roughly two miles north to south and is read as a human face in profile — Forehead, Nose, Lips, Chin, Adam's Apple — with the Chin holding the true summit. The land is held within Mount Mansfield State Forest, with Stowe to the east and Underhill to the west.
The summit ridge carries about 250 acres of arctic-alpine tundra, one of the few remaining patches in the eastern United States, with plants — Bigelow's sedge, Lapland rosebay, alpine bilberry — left behind when the Laurentide ice sheet retreated. Above tree line the wind blows nearly constantly and the vegetation is fragile enough that the Green Mountain Club marks the trail in cairns and asks walkers to stay on bare rock. Temperatures on the Chin run about twenty degrees colder than Stowe village below.
Mansfield holds four full seasons cleanly. Stowe Mountain Resort runs lifts on the east flank from late November through April, with average annual snowfall above 300 inches. The Long Trail, the oldest long-distance hiking trail in the United States, opens in late spring and runs north over the summit ridge. Late September brings the colour line up the mountain over about two weeks. The auto toll road from Stowe to the Nose is open roughly mid-May through mid-October.