Des Plaines River
— — a quiet beginning to a long river.
Not only on a wall.
“A river that begins quietly. The headwaters spread through farm marshes and roadside ditches in southeastern Wisconsin before the channel deepens and pulls south into Illinois. In the Wisconsin reach it is shallow, brown, screened by willow and silver maple. Herons work the cutbanks. Joggers cross it on county bridges without noticing they have. The long river starts here.
Des Plaines River, 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 Des Plaines River rises in Racine and Kenosha counties of southeastern Wisconsin, in marshlands a short drive west of Lake Michigan. From there it flows about 133 miles south through Illinois to join the Kankakee at Channahon, forming the Illinois River. The Wisconsin reach is only a small fraction of the total length but carries the watershed's headwaters, draining farmland and wetland near Union Grove. The river is part of the broader Illinois River basin and ultimately the Mississippi system.
The Wisconsin headwaters are slow, tannin-stained, and ankle-deep through most of the summer months. The channel weaves between hummocks of reed canary grass and old farm tile outflows, and the gradient is gentle enough that the river barely moves in places. By the time the same water reaches Joliet, two hundred miles downstream, it carries barge traffic and is locked into the Illinois Waterway. Here, near its source in rural Racine County, a child can step across it in muck boots.
The headwater stretch sees almost no traffic. There is no canoe launch in the Wisconsin reach and no state park along the banks; access is from county roads, on foot, between corn and soybean fields. Sandhill cranes nest in the marsh in spring; great blue herons hold the shallows through summer; in October the willows go yellow before the rest of the bottomland. The loudest sound for miles is often a freight train running the rail line a mile east of the bottomland.