Rockford
— — a working river town that kept its trees.
Not only on a wall.
“Rockford sits on the Rock River where it bends through northern Illinois, ninety miles west of Chicago and not quite halfway to the Mississippi. It was a milling town, then a machine-tool town, then quietly a garden town. The Forest City nickname is older than most of the trees still left on the bluff. The river runs under seven bridges downtown, slow and brown in summer, ice-grey in February. — from the studio
Rockford, 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.
Rockford is the seat of Winnebago County and the third-largest city in Illinois, with a population of about one hundred forty-eight thousand. It straddles the Rock River roughly ninety miles west-northwest of Chicago and twenty miles south of the Wisconsin line. The town grew up at a natural ford in the river, milled grain through the 1800s, then turned to machine tools, furniture, and aerospace components in the twentieth century. The Rock itself runs from southern Wisconsin to the Mississippi at Rock Island, two hundred ninety-nine miles end to end.
Four real seasons, all of them on the river. Spring runs cold and high through March and April, with the dam at Fordam Dam pulling a long white line across the channel. Summer pulls families to Sinnissippi Gardens and the riverwalk. Autumn turns the bluff at Klehm Arboretum, a one hundred fifty-five-acre collection that holds Illinois' state champion ginkgo. Winter freezes the side channels above the dam and quiets the whole valley. The Forest City planted street trees a century before most of the suburbs around it did, and they show in October.
The riverfront is the day. Anderson Japanese Gardens, a twelve-acre stroll garden on the city's south side, has been ranked the top Japanese garden in North America by the Journal of Japanese Gardening for years running, and opens daily from May through October. Coronado Performing Arts Center, a 1927 atmospheric theatre on North Main, runs tours and a full season of touring shows. Tinker Swiss Cottage, built in 1865 above Kent Creek, opens for guided tours Wednesday through Sunday. Most of downtown is walkable from a single parking deck on State Street.