Traverse City Cherry Festival
— the week the bay belongs to the cherry.
Not only on a wall.
Traverse City Cherry Festival, 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.
“Eight days at the head of Grand Traverse Bay, timed to the start of tart harvest. The festival began in 1925 as a blessing-of-the-blossoms, and a hundred years on still runs a cherry pie eating contest, an air show, two parades, and a queen. About half a million people come through Open Space Park each July.
The place, in three passes.
The National Cherry Festival fills Open Space Park on the West Grand Traverse Bay waterfront in Traverse City, Michigan, each July. The eight-day run is timed to the start of the tart cherry harvest, which begins in the first or second week of the month on the Old Mission and Leelanau peninsulas surrounding the bay. About half a million people attend across the week, drawing from the Grand Traverse counties that grow roughly seventy-five percent of the United States tart cherry crop. The festival is non-profit, staffed largely by volunteers from the region.
The festival began in 1925 as the Blessing of the Blossoms, a Catholic-rooted spring rite for the orchards above the bay. It moved to July in 1931 to track the actual harvest, took the National name in 1986, and now runs for the eight days bridging the first weekend of the month through July fourth or the weekend after. The Cherry Royale Parade fills Front Street on the closing Saturday. The Blue Angels and Thunderbirds headline the air show in alternating years over the West Bay.
Open Space Park sits at the foot of Cass Street, directly on the West Bay shoreline. Most events are free, including the air show, the two parades, and the cherry pie eating contest. Wristbands cover the midway and the headliner concerts at the Pepsi Bayside Music Stage. Lodging in town fills six months out; many visitors stay along M-22 in Leelanau or up the Old Mission ridge and drive in along the bay each morning.
