Lake Mary oxbow
— a bend the river used to be.
Not only on a wall.
Lake Mary oxbow, 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.
“Lake Mary is an oxbow in Wilkinson County, a long crescent the Mississippi River cut off generations ago when it straightened its course. Cypress and tupelo stand in the shallows; bass and catfish hold under the knees. The lake reaches back toward the river through low cypress brake. Houseboats sit at the few private camps. The cars do not come this far down often. from the studio
The place, in three passes.
Lake Mary is an oxbow lake in Wilkinson County, the southwesternmost county of Mississippi, formed when the Mississippi River cut off one of its meanders and left the bend behind as standing water. The lake runs a long crescent through bottomland hardwood and cypress brake near the river's modern channel, west of Woodville and south of Natchez. Wilkinson County borders Louisiana on the south and the river on the west, and most of the surrounding land is private timber and farm acreage with a few small public boat ramps reaching down to the water.
Oxbows like Lake Mary still flood and exchange water with the parent river during the spring rise on the lower Mississippi, which is what keeps them alive as fisheries instead of silting in. The shallows hold bald cypress and water tupelo, and the famously dark, tannin-stained water of a Lower Mississippi backwater reads almost black at the edges. Crappie, bream, largemouth bass, and channel catfish all hold here. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers manages river levels at distant lock-and-dam complexes upstream, which sets when the oxbow connects and disconnects.
Wilkinson County is one of the least populated counties in Mississippi, with roughly 8,500 residents at the 2020 census across more than 670 square miles, so the boat traffic on the oxbow stays light most of the year. The nearest town of any size is Woodville, the county seat, about 20 miles east of the lake by road. Phone signal thins out approaching the river. Bottomland-hardwood country has its own quality of quiet — broken by herons working the shallows and the slap of a beaver tail at dusk.
