Texas Christian University Frog Fountain
— the fountain the horned frogs leap from.
Not only on a wall.
Texas Christian University Frog Fountain, 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.
“Frog Fountain sits at the centre of the Campus Commons at Texas Christian University, a tiered stack of bronze leaves with leaping horned frogs at its base. The piece was designed in 1969 by Gene Owens, a TCU alumnus and Texas sculptor, and was relocated to its present site when the Commons was rebuilt in 2010. Generations of students have been thrown in on their birthdays, and the basin sounds across half the quad on warm afternoons.
The place, in three passes.
Frog Fountain stands at the centre of the Campus Commons at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, surrounded by Scharbauer Hall, the Mary Couts Burnett Library, and Sadler Hall. TCU was founded as AddRan Male and Female College in 1873 by brothers Addison and Randolph Clark, and moved to its present site in 1910 after a fire destroyed the Waco campus. The Horned Frog has been the school's mascot since 1897, the year the student yearbook adopted the name; the fountain takes the mascot literally.
The fountain itself is a tiered bronze sculpture, a stack of stylised leaves rising from a circular pool with cast horned frogs leaping at the base. Gene Owens, the sculptor, was a 1953 TCU graduate who studied under Charles Umlauf at the University of Texas and worked for decades on commissions across the Southwest. The original 1969 installation was relocated and refurbished in 2010 as part of the Campus Commons project; the bronze frogs were re-set in the rebuilt pool that now anchors the quad.
The Campus Commons is open at all hours and the fountain runs through the warmer months, typically March through November depending on Fort Worth's freezes. Campus tours through the admissions office begin nearby in Scharbauer Hall and almost always loop past the pool. The neighbourhood around the campus, including the TCU-West Cliff district and University Drive's stretch of restaurants, is walkable from the Commons. Game days at Amon G. Carter Stadium, four blocks north, draw the largest crowds through the square.
