Sugarbush Mad River Valley overlook
— — a valley that holds its weather.
Not only on a wall.
“The view east from the Sugarbush side toward the Northfield Range, with the Mad River threading the valley floor between Waitsfield and Warren. A working landscape of dairy farms, sugarbush stands, and white-steepled villages, sitting roughly 700 feet above sea level at the river and rising to 3,975 feet at Lincoln Peak behind. In late afternoon the shadow of the Greens crosses the valley first, leaving the Northfield ridge lit for another twenty minutes. from the studio
Sugarbush Mad River Valley overlook, 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 Mad River Valley runs about fourteen miles north–south through central Vermont, bounded by the main Green Mountain spine on the west and the Northfield Range on the east. Its three working villages are Waitsfield, Warren, and Fayston, with a combined year-round population near 4,000. The Mad River, a tributary of the Winooski, drains the valley floor at roughly 700 feet and meets the Winooski near Moretown. The valley is one of the few in Vermont that has resisted franchise development; its main road, Route 100, runs as it has since the 1930s.
Because the valley runs north–south between two ridges, the Greens to the west catch the last sun and the Northfield ridge to the east catches the first. Late-afternoon shadow climbs the Northfield slope in a slow line; sunset over Lincoln Peak lights the east-facing dairy pasture in a colour Vermonters call the green-gold half hour. In October the same light through stripped sugar-maples turns the valley floor amber for the ten days the leaves hold on the upper farms.
The valley keeps a four-season working calendar. Sugaring runs from mid-February into early April when the daytime thaw and overnight freeze pump sap through the maple stands above Waitsfield. Mud season follows through late April. The first hay cut lands in June, the river runs swimmable through August, foliage peaks in the first week of October, and Sugarbush and Mad River Glen open the ski season in late November. Each window is short. Locals call this the valley's discipline.