Albufera lagoon rice paddies
— the field where paella was first cooked.
Not only on a wall.
Albufera lagoon rice paddies, 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.
“A shallow freshwater lagoon ten kilometres south of Valencia, ringed by rice paddies and held back from the Mediterranean by a long pine-covered sand bar. In summer the paddies sit under a thin sheet of water and reflect the whole sky; in autumn they go gold. The wooden flat-bottomed boats from El Palmar still go out at sunset for visitors and for eels. — from the studio
The place, in three passes.
L'Albufera is a shallow freshwater coastal lagoon about ten kilometres south of the city of Valencia, separated from the Mediterranean by a long sand bar called the Dehesa del Saler, planted with stone pine. The lagoon itself covers roughly 21 square kilometres and the surrounding Parc Natural de l'Albufera, declared by the Generalitat Valenciana in 1986, covers about 211 square kilometres of paddies, dunes, and reed beds. The lagoon is internationally listed as a Ramsar wetland for its importance to migratory birds, especially over-wintering ducks and herons.
The lagoon is shallow — usually around a metre deep — and entirely freshwater, fed by irrigation channels and by springs along its western edge. The level is controlled by sluice gates called golas that connect to the sea and are opened on a schedule keyed to the rice cycle. From late spring the paddies are flooded and the whole landscape becomes a single sheet of water broken by low embankments and barracas. After the September harvest the fields drain and migratory waterfowl move in for the winter, with counts that have run into the hundreds of thousands of birds.
The most popular entry is the village of El Palmar, on an island in the lagoon, reached by car on the CV-500 south from Valencia city in about 20 minutes. Boatmen there run short trips on traditional flat-bottomed wooden boats called albuferencs, especially at sunset. El Palmar is also where Valencian rice cuisine concentrates: the paella valenciana with rabbit and snail, the all i pebre of eel, the arròs a banda. A visitor centre at Racó de l'Olla on the Dehesa side covers the wider park and the bird routes.
