Texas State Capitol Austin pink granite
— the dome that turns coral at the end of the day.
Not only on a wall.
Texas State Capitol Austin pink granite, 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 Capitol stands at the head of Congress Avenue, taller than the Capitol in Washington and built from a granite the colour of the sky behind it at sunset. The stone came by mule and rail from Granite Mountain near Marble Falls. The building was finished in 1888. On a clear evening the dome reads almost coral.
The place, in three passes.
The Texas State Capitol opened on May 16, 1888, after seven years of construction at the north end of Congress Avenue in downtown Austin. The architect was Elijah E. Myers of Detroit, who also designed the capitols of Michigan and Colorado. At 302 feet, 8 inches, it stands about fifteen feet taller than the United States Capitol. The exterior is Sunset Red granite, donated by the owners of Granite Mountain in Burnet County in exchange for the spur railway built to haul it.
The granite is a coarse-grained pink stone from Granite Mountain, three miles north of Marble Falls. The mountain has been quarried continuously since the 1880s and is still owned by Cold Spring Granite. Choosing it was partly economics: the alternative limestone from Oatmanville weathered to streaked grey within months of being cut. The pink comes from potassium feldspar; the dark flecks are biotite. The same stone faces buildings in Galveston and Fort Worth, and surfaces the rotunda floor of the Capitol itself.
Austin sits at about thirty degrees north latitude, and summer evenings stretch past eight-thirty. As the sun drops, the granite turns through a sequence: buff at midday, salmon by six, deep coral against a dimming sky around eight. The dome's Goddess of Liberty statue, cast zinc painted white, holds the last light after the walls have gone to shadow. The grounds are open to the public from sunrise to ten p.m., and the south steps are a long-standing meeting spot for protests, runs, and wedding photos.
