Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve
— the last big piece of the ocean of grass.
Not only on a wall.
Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve, 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.
“Once the tallgrass covered 170 million acres of the middle of the continent. Less than four percent of it is left, and most of what survives is here in the Flint Hills of Kansas. The preserve runs to about eleven thousand acres on the old Spring Hill Ranch, with a small bison herd back on the land since 2009. The big bluestem reaches over a tall person's head by August. Wind moves through it the way it moves through water.
The place, in three passes.
Tallgrass Prairie National Preserve covers about 10,894 acres in the Flint Hills of Chase County, Kansas, north of Strong City on the historic Spring Hill Ranch. Established by Congress in 1996, it is co-managed by the National Park Service and The Nature Conservancy, which owns most of the land. The preserve protects the largest remaining intact tract of tallgrass prairie, an ecosystem that once covered roughly 170 million acres from Indiana to the eastern Plains and now survives on less than four percent of that range.
The prairie has a clear annual cycle. Ranchers and the Park Service set prescribed burns in March and April, which clear the thatch and trigger explosive growth. Big bluestem, Indiangrass, switchgrass, and little bluestem push up through May and June; by August the canopy can reach over six feet. September turns the grass copper and rust, October bronze. Winter strips the colour back to wheat and rose, with snow rare enough that the dormant prairie reads as the dominant landscape most years.
The preserve is open every day, free of charge, with a visitor centre in the 1881 limestone barn at Spring Hill. A small bison herd, reintroduced in 2009 and now around 100 animals, ranges across a 1,100-acre pasture. Ranger-led bus tours of the back country run seasonally; the Southwind, Bottomland, and Scenic Overlook trails are open year-round for self-guided walks. Two highways carry visitors in — Kansas 177 from Strong City and U.S. 50 east from Cottonwood Falls.
