KU Watson Library
— the long reading room and the light that crosses it.
Not only on a wall.
KU Watson Library, 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.
“Watson Library on Jayhawk Boulevard, at the top of Mount Oread in Lawrence. The original block went up in 1924, a limestone library named for the chancellor Carrie Watson, the first woman to serve as librarian at the University of Kansas. Two wings followed in the fifties and sixties. The third-floor reading room runs the length of the building under tall windows that face south down the hill. Generations of KU students have studied through finals at those long oak tables, in lamp-light at dusk, in the dependable quiet of an old stack library. from the studio
The place, in three passes.
Watson Library is the central library of the University of Kansas, on Jayhawk Boulevard in Lawrence at the crown of Mount Oread. The original limestone block was completed in 1924 and named for Carrie Watson, the first woman to serve as librarian of the university, who held the post from 1887 to 1921. Two large additions in 1953 and 1966 expanded the stacks and reading rooms. Today Watson anchors a KU Libraries system that holds more than 4.3 million volumes across the campus, and the building itself serves the humanities and social-science collections.
Watson's signature interior is the long reading room on the third floor, running south under tall windows that look down the hill toward downtown Lawrence and the Kansas River valley. The room holds heavy oak tables and green-shaded reading lamps in long rows. In the afternoon, light crosses the room slowly and lifts the gold lettering on the older spines along the open shelves. Toward dusk through finals week, every lamp is on and the room reads in two registers — the warm pool of each desk lamp, the cold blue of the sky beyond the glass.
Watson sits on Jayhawk Boulevard, between Wescoe Hall and the Kansas Union. The library is open to KU students and faculty year-round, and to the public for reference and use of most non-special collections during posted hours. Term hours typically run early morning through midnight on weekdays, with reduced weekend and holiday schedules — check the KU Libraries website before a visit. Metered parking lines the boulevard on weekdays and is free most evenings and weekends. The Watson cafe on the first floor stays open most of the day during term.
