Bluebonnets along a Hill Country fence
— the blue the spring rain leaves in the grass.
Not only on a wall.
Bluebonnets along a Hill Country fence, 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 Texas state flower, Lupinus texensis, blooming hard along a cedar post-and-wire fence on a Hill Country ranch road. Peak runs mid-March through mid-April. Heavy years follow wet falls. The blue carries a colour the camera always overstates and the eye finally settles on. Indian paintbrush turns up beside them, red against the blue, and the bees do the rest.
The place, in three passes.
The Texas Hill Country sits on the eastern edge of the Edwards Plateau, defined to the east and south by the Balcones Escarpment. Limestone outcrops, juniper savanna, and Bermuda-grass roadsides cover the rolling country between Austin, Fredericksburg, and Kerrville. Bluebonnets bloom heaviest along farm-to-market roads like FM 152 around Llano, the Willow City Loop north of Fredericksburg, and Highway 16 between Llano and Kerrville. The Texas Department of Transportation has sown bluebonnet seed along state highways since 1934, which is why the flowers and the asphalt arrived together.
Lupinus texensis is one of six lupines designated the Texas state flower; the others were added in 1971 to settle a long argument among bluebonnet partisans. The classic blue is a deep cobalt with a white tip on the upper banner, which turns magenta after pollination, signalling the bees to move on. Indian paintbrush (Castilleja indivisa) blooms in the same fields, throwing red against the blue. Heavy bloom years follow wet autumns and mild winters; a dry October usually means a thin spring. The colour reads truer at the edge of light than at noon.
First flowers open in early March in the southern Hill Country and the bloom moves north through the month. Peak is roughly the third week of March through the second week of April, depending on the year. By late April the seed has set and the stalks brown. The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin maintains a weekly bluebonnet report through the spring. The classic shot is the cedar post-and-wire fence with late afternoon sun across it, which is when the colour holds without flattening.
