Marlette Lake high cirque
— the lake that feeds the capital.
Not only on a wall.
Marlette Lake high cirque, 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 cold high lake set in a basin above Tahoe's east shore, in the Carson Range of western Nevada. The Marlette flume system has carried its water down the canyons to Carson City since the late 1800s. Today the lake sits inside Lake Tahoe Nevada State Park, reached on foot or by bicycle from Spooner Lake or from the Flume Trail along the ridge above Sand Harbor. The lake holds dark blue against red-needled stands of Jeffrey pine. from the studio
The place, in three passes.
Marlette Lake sits at roughly 7,800 feet on a high bench above the east shore of Lake Tahoe, inside Lake Tahoe Nevada State Park in Washoe County. It is held in a basin in the Carson Range, the eastern sub-range of the Sierra Nevada that forms the Tahoe-Carson divide. The lake drains northeast through Marlette Creek toward the Carson Valley. It is reached by trail and fire road from the Spooner Lake trailhead on U.S. 50, about five miles in, or by bicycle along the Flume Trail from Tunnel Creek above Incense Village.
The lake's water has supplied Virginia City and Carson City for more than a century. Engineer Hermann Schussler designed the Marlette Lake Water System in the 1870s for the Comstock mines, using an inverted siphon across Washoe Valley that was, at the time, the highest-pressure pipeline in the world. The state of Nevada bought the system in 1963; it still supplies water to the capital. Public swimming is prohibited to protect the supply, and the lake holds Lahontan cutthroat trout under catch-and-release management.
The shortest approach is from Spooner Lake on U.S. 50, a steady climb on the North Canyon Road of about five miles one way. From the north, the Flume Trail leaves Tunnel Creek Road above Incline Village and runs along the cliff above Sand Harbor on the old wooden flume bench, joining the Marlette basin at its outlet. Both routes are open to hikers and bicycles. Snow closes the upper road from late autumn through spring; Nevada State Parks publishes seasonal access updates.
