Torre del Oro on the river
— the dodecagon the river keeps catching.
Not only on a wall.
Torre del Oro on the river, 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 twelve-sided watchtower on the river in Seville, built by the Almohads in the early thirteenth century to anchor a chain that crossed the Guadalquivir. The lower tiers are rough stone; the upper lantern was added in 1760. Late in the afternoon the sandstone takes the colour that gave the tower its name, and the cruise barges drift between it and Triana on the far bank.
The place, in three passes.
The Torre del Oro stands on the left bank of the Guadalquivir, in Seville's Arenal quarter, at the foot of the Paseo de Cristóbal Colón. It was built by the Almohad Caliphate around 1220-1221 as a military watchtower, the southern end of a defensive line that closed the river to enemy ships with a chain stretched across to a now-vanished tower on the Triana side. The structure rises in three stages: a twelve-sided dodecagonal base, a smaller hexagonal second tier, and a circular cupola added in 1760 by the engineer Sebastián Van der Borcht.
The walls are mortar and rammed earth faced in ashlar, a construction method the Almohads used across their Andalusi fortifications. The tower has survived the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, a planned demolition in 1868 (cancelled after public protest), and the steady silting of the river that closed Seville's old port. Since 1944 it has housed the Naval Museum of Seville, with charts, models, and instruments from the era when the Casa de Contratación made the Guadalquivir the registered point of entry for everything coming back from the Americas.
The Naval Museum inside the tower is open Monday through Sunday, with shorter hours on weekends, and a small admission fee that is waived on Mondays. The climb is narrow stone stairs to a rooftop terrace with the best free-standing view of the Triana bridge, the bullring of the Real Maestranza one block north, and the bend of the Guadalquivir running south toward the old shipyards. The tower is a five-minute walk from the Cathedral and ten from the Alcázar.
