Hyalite of the Bighorns alpine lake
— — a piece of clear glass set in granite.
Not only on a wall.
“An alpine lake held above timberline in the Bighorn Mountains of north-central Wyoming. Walls of pale granite on three sides, a thin crescent of meadow on the fourth, and water so clear the bottom stones look an arm's length away. The wind comes off Cloud Peak in long pulls. There is no road in; the trails out of West Tensleep and Hunter Mesa carry the few people who come. — from the studio
Hyalite of the Bighorns alpine lake, 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 Bighorn Mountains rise as an isolated range in north-central Wyoming, separated from the Rockies proper by the Bighorn Basin to the west and the Powder River country to the east. At the range's heart is the 189,000-acre Cloud Peak Wilderness inside Bighorn National Forest, anchored by 13,167-foot Cloud Peak. The high country holds more than 250 named alpine lakes scoured out by Pleistocene glaciers, most reached only on foot from trailheads like West Tensleep, Hunter Mesa, and the Edelman.
These lakes sit in granite cirques carved by glaciation and fed by lingering snowfields rather than year-round ice, so the water reads clear and dark blue rather than the milky turquoise of glacier-flour lakes. Many hold native and stocked cutthroat, brook, and golden trout — Cloud Peak Wilderness is one of the most reliable places in the lower 48 for high-country golden trout fishing. Ice typically holds the lakes into late June, and a second freeze can come by early October.
The Bighorns are quieter than the Tetons or the Winds because they are off the main travel routes and because the wilderness is closed to motors and mechanized travel. Visitor counts to Bighorn National Forest run a fraction of those at Grand Teton or Yellowstone. Wildlife in the high basins includes moose, mountain goat, and the bighorn sheep the range is named for. Above timberline the only sounds tend to be wind, water moving between lakes, and the occasional rockfall off a cirque headwall.