Savage River Reservoir
— the held water above the loudest river in the East.
Not only on a wall.
Savage River Reservoir, 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 narrow blue reservoir cupped between ridges of Savage River State Forest, holding back a tailwater that whitewater paddlers travel a long way for. Above the dam the water sits still, dark with hemlock shadow. Below it, on release days, the river runs a Class IV slalom course that hosted a world championship. Two moods of the same water, ten minutes apart. From the studio.
The place, in three passes.
Savage River Reservoir sits in Garrett County in far western Maryland, inside the 54,000-acre Savage River State Forest. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers completed the earth-and-rock dam in 1952 to manage flood flows on the Potomac. The pool stretches roughly three and a half miles up the narrow valley between Big Savage Mountain and Backbone Mountain, the latter the highest point in the state at 3,360 feet. Access is from Savage River Road off Maryland Route 135 near Bloomington.
The reservoir holds back what becomes, on scheduled release days, the most demanding whitewater in the eastern United States. The 5.5-mile tailwater between the dam and the Potomac confluence runs continuous Class III with Class IV sections, and the slalom course built into it hosted the 1989 ICF Canoe Slalom World Championships, the only time the event has been held in the United States. American Whitewater publishes the release calendar; trout anglers fish the same cold water on non-release days.
The Allegheny Plateau gives this reservoir a real four-season cycle. Snow lies on Big Savage Mountain from December into March, and the surface ices most winters. Spring brings the first scheduled releases and the heaviest paddler weekends. Summer fishing is best at dawn for stocked rainbow and brown trout out of the tailwater. October is the photographic window, when the mixed oak and red maple forest around the pool turns through three weeks of colour against the dark conifer of the shoreline.
