Cremona
— the brick city where the violin was born.
Not only on a wall.
Cremona, 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.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
“Cremona sits low on the left bank of the Po, the kind of city that does not announce itself. The Torrazzo, a brick bell tower over a hundred metres tall, keeps watch above the cathedral square. A few streets away, luthiers shape spruce and maple in workshops, some of which trace back to the 1500s. Antonio Stradivari worked here. So did Guarneri. The traditional craft was inscribed by UNESCO in 2012. Visitors climb the Torrazzo's 502 steps, stop into the Museo del Violino, and stay for a plate of mostarda. The bells still mark the hours.
The place, in three passes.
Cremona lies on the left bank of the Po River in Lombardy, northern Italy, about 95 km southeast of Milan and 65 km north of Parma. Roman in origin, founded in 218 BCE as a military colony, the city sits at roughly 45 metres above sea level on the flat fertile plain that gives Lombard cuisine its grana padano and its long tradition of cured meats. The historic centre is dominated by the Piazza del Comune, where the Romanesque Duomo, the octagonal Baptistery, and the Torrazzo bell tower stand together. The Torrazzo, completed around 1305 and reaching 112.27 metres, is among the tallest medieval brick bell towers in Europe.
The Torrazzo is brick. Built in stages between the 13th and early 14th centuries, the tower joins the Duomo through the Bertazzola, a Renaissance loggia added in the 16th century. The cathedral itself, consecrated in 1190, is Lombard Romanesque with later Gothic and Renaissance additions; its façade is white marble with rose-window inlay, but the body and the surrounding civic buildings are the warm red brick that gives Cremona its colour at the end of the day. The Baptistery, octagonal and finished in 1167, completes the square. Together they form one of the more coherent medieval ensembles in Lombardy, owing more to brick and clay than to quarried stone.
The Museo del Violino, on Piazza Marconi, holds the city's permanent collection of Stradivari, Amati, and Guarneri instruments and runs daily auditions in its concert hall. The Torrazzo is open to climbers willing to take the 502 steps to the platform, where the astronomical clock face is among the largest in Europe. Around 150 active luthier workshops still operate in Cremona today, many visible through shop windows in the streets off Piazza del Comune. The traditional craft was inscribed on the UNESCO Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2012. Cremona is reached by direct train from Milan in about an hour.
