Black bear in White Mountain beech forest
— — the year the mast was good.
Not only on a wall.
“A black bear moving through American beech in the White Mountains of New Hampshire — the smooth grey trunks, the low light, the yellow leaves still hanging in November. Black bears here time their autumn weight gain to the beechnut crop, climbing high into the canopy for the nuts in a strong mast year and reading the forest for harder food in a weak one. The White Mountain National Forest covers roughly 750,000 acres, and the bears have it nearly to themselves once the trails empty out. from the studio
Black bear in White Mountain beech forest, 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.
The White Mountain National Forest spans roughly 750,000 acres across northern New Hampshire and a small western strip of Maine, taking in the Presidentials, the Pemigewasset and Sandwich ranges, and the long beech-birch-maple slopes between them. American beech (Fagus grandifolia) is one of the three dominant northern hardwoods on those slopes, alongside yellow birch and sugar maple, and its smooth grey bark is the easiest tree to read in a winter forest. New Hampshire's resident black bear population is estimated at around five thousand animals.
Bears in the White Mountains time their autumn to the beech mast — the irregular bumper crop of beechnuts that a stand produces every two to eight years. In a good mast year, sows climb high into the canopy and break limbs to reach the nuts; the resulting bear claw marks score the smooth grey bark for decades. In a poor year the same bears travel farther and lean more on black cherry, hobblebush, and oak acorns at lower elevation. Most bears enter dens between mid-November and early December.
American black bears in northern New England are shy of people and most active at dawn and dusk. They communicate mostly through scent and bark marks rather than vocalization, which is why a beech grove worked by bears reads as quiet and almost untouched until you notice the claw scars climbing the trunks. Encounters along Whites trails are uncommon and almost always end with the bear leaving first. Stand-hunting season opens in early September under New Hampshire Fish and Game regulation.