Cuenca hanging houses on the gorge
— wooden balconies the cliff agreed to carry.
Not only on a wall.
Cuenca hanging houses on the gorge, 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.
“Three or four medieval houses with stacked wooden balconies that step out over the lip of the Huécar gorge. The cliff drops away beneath them. Across the canyon, a footbridge of iron and timber crosses to the parador. One of the houses now holds the Spanish Museum of Abstract Art. The town behind sits on the high ground between two rivers, in pale stone under a hard Castilian sky. — from the studio
The place, in three passes.
The Casas Colgadas, the Hanging Houses, are medieval residences perched on the eastern edge of Cuenca's old town, where the rock drops into the Huécar gorge. The old town sits on a high spur between the Júcar and Huécar rivers, in the province of Cuenca, Castilla-La Mancha, central Spain. The historic walled city was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1996 as one of the best-preserved medieval fortified hill towns in Europe. The houses themselves date to the 14th and 15th centuries; only three of an original cluster survive in their cantilevered form today.
The houses are built of local limestone and rough plaster, with timber-framed balconies that cantilever directly over the cliff. They were restored in the 1920s by the architect Fernando Alcántara after centuries of decay; one of the three surviving houses now holds the Museum of Spanish Abstract Art, opened in 1966 with a collection assembled by Fernando Zóbel that includes Antoni Tàpies, Eduardo Chillida, and Antonio Saura. The Puente de San Pablo, a steel and wood footbridge first built in 1533 and rebuilt in 1903, crosses the gorge to the Convent of San Pablo, now a parador, and gives the canonical view back at the houses.
Cuenca lies about 165 km east of Madrid; the AVE high-speed train reaches Cuenca-Fernando Zóbel station in around 55 minutes. From the new town, a steep walk or a short taxi climb leads up to the Plaza Mayor and the old town. The Museum of Spanish Abstract Art occupies one of the Hanging Houses and opens Tuesday through Sunday, with a small admission. The Puente de San Pablo is open at all hours and gives the best photograph at the end of the day, when the late sun catches the limestone. The town gets cold in winter; light snow is common in January.
