Sheyenne National Grassland tallgrass
— the grass that remembers the buffalo.
Not only on a wall.
Sheyenne National Grassland tallgrass, 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.
“The largest publicly owned tallgrass prairie left in the country, kept on the sandhill deltas above the Sheyenne River. Big bluestem and Indiangrass run head-high by August, with prairie chickens dancing on the leks in April and the federally threatened western prairie fringed orchid blooming white in the swales each July. The wind moves through the stalks like water.
The place, in three passes.
The Sheyenne National Grassland covers about 70,180 acres of sandhill prairie in Ransom and Richland counties, southeastern North Dakota. It is the largest publicly owned tallgrass prairie in the United States, administered by the U.S. Forest Service from the district office in Lisbon. The land was assembled by the federal government during the 1930s after homestead farming failed on the sandy soils, and has been managed for grazing, wildlife, and limited recreation since 1960. The North Country National Scenic Trail crosses the grassland and offers the simplest public foot access to the interior swales.
The prairie reads as a different place each month. By late May the prairie chickens have finished booming on the leks and the new growth is ankle-high. June and July bring the wildflower bloom, including the federally threatened western prairie fringed orchid in the wetter swales. Big bluestem and Indiangrass reach five to seven feet by mid-August and hold height through the killing frost. By November the grass has cured to a deep copper-orange and stays standing through the first snows of the cold months.
Few roads cross the interior, and the gravel tracks that exist run between long stretches of open pasture without houses. McLeod, the small community closest to the heart of the grassland, has a population in the double digits. Wind in the seedheads of big bluestem makes a dry, continuous rustle that carries far in the absence of traffic. Sandhill cranes pass overhead in spring and fall, and meadowlarks call from fenceposts through the breeding season, but for long stretches the prairie holds nothing else.
