Stowe Village steeple at autumn
— — the white steeple the maples set on fire.
Not only on a wall.
“The white spire on Main Street, with Mount Mansfield holding the ridge behind it. The Stowe Community Church has stood at the head of the village since 1863, and for two weeks every October the sugar maples around it turn the colour of a slow lamp. Drivers slow without meaning to. The photograph everyone has of Vermont, made in the place that gave it.
Stowe Village steeple at autumn, 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.
Stowe sits in Lamoille County in northern Vermont, in the shadow of Mount Mansfield — at 4,395 feet, the highest peak in the state. The village clusters along Main Street where the Stowe Community Church, a Greek Revival meetinghouse built in 1863, anchors the view. The town was chartered in 1763 and grew first as a farming settlement, then as a winter resort once the Mount Mansfield ski operation opened in the 1930s. The steeple sightline up Main Street toward the mountain is one of the most photographed views in New England.
Peak foliage in Stowe lands in the first two weeks of October most years, sometimes drifting a few days either side of October 10. The sugar maples lining Main Street turn first — orange and a deep cadmium red — followed by the beech and birch up the slopes of Spruce Peak. The Vermont Department of Tourism publishes a weekly foliage report each fall tracking the colour line as it moves south. Cold nights and bright days set the pigment; a warm week dulls it.
Stowe lies about 36 miles east of Burlington, reached by I-89 to exit 10 and then Route 100 north. The village is walkable end to end, with the church, the Helen Day Art Center, and the head of the 5.3-mile Stowe Recreation Path within a few minutes of each other. The church itself remains an active congregation, open for services on Sundays. The classic foliage photograph is taken from the south end of Main Street, looking north toward the steeple and the mountain behind.