Samarkand
— — the blue the desert keeps.
Not only on a wall.
“One of the great Silk Road cities, halfway between China and the Mediterranean. The Registan, three madrasas facing a single plaza, has held its turquoise tile through six centuries of weather. The oldest, Ulugh Beg's, was built in 1420; the other two faced it in the 1600s. Timur is buried a kilometre south, under a fluted dome the colour of evening sky.
Samarkand, 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.
Samarkand sits in the Zarafshan River valley in southeastern Uzbekistan, about 270 kilometres south of Tashkent, with a population of around 550,000. Settled before 700 BCE, it served as a hub of the Silk Road for more than a millennium and became the capital of Timur's empire in the late fourteenth century. UNESCO inscribed the historic centre as a World Heritage Site in 2001, citing its role as a long-running crossroads of cultures between East and West.
The blue of Samarkand is a calibrated palette of turquoise, cobalt, and lapis, set against terracotta brick. The tilework on the Registan madrasas, on Bibi-Khanym Mosque, and across the Shah-i-Zinda necropolis uses majolica and mosaic faience laid down between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. The pigment comes from cobalt and copper oxides, fixed at high temperature. The dome over Timur's tomb at Gur-e-Amir is fluted in 64 ribs, each carrying the same blue.
The Registan, Gur-e-Amir, Bibi-Khanym, and Shah-i-Zinda lie within a 2-kilometre walk of one another in the old city. Each site charges a separate entrance fee; combined tickets are available at the Registan gate. Spring and autumn give the steadiest weather; summer reaches 40°C and the open plazas hold the heat. The high-speed Afrosiyob train from Tashkent covers the 300-kilometre route in just over two hours. Modest dress is expected at active religious sites.