Carter Mountain Orchard
— a view of the Blue Ridge across a row of apple trees.
Not only on a wall.
Carter Mountain Orchard, 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.
“From the deck at the top of the hill, the long blue line of the Ridge fills the western horizon and Monticello sits below to the north. The Chiles family has worked this orchard since 1912. Thursday nights in summer the Sunset Series plays on the deck, and the western sky does what it does. from the studio
The place, in three passes.
Carter Mountain Orchard occupies the north shoulder of Carter's Mountain at roughly seventeen hundred feet, in Albemarle County south of Charlottesville. The Chiles family has farmed it since 1912 and runs it today as one of several Chiles Family Orchards in central Virginia. The hillside grows apples, peaches, and sour cherries on terraced rows. The summit road climbs from Route 53, the Thomas Jefferson Parkway. Monticello sits directly below to the north and the Blue Ridge fills the long view to the west, with the Rockfish Gap notch visible on clear days.
The summit faces west, which makes the orchard one of the most reliable sunset views in Albemarle County. The Blue Ridge is sixteen miles off and reads as a low band of pure blue when the sun is high, then layers into copper and pink as it drops behind the ridge. The Sunset Series, which runs Thursday evenings from May through September, was built around exactly this hour on the deck. The western sky takes its time after the sun is gone, and the orchard often empties slowly rather than at once.
The orchard is reached by a switchback gravel road off Route 53, two miles up from the Monticello gates. Apple picking opens in mid-August with Ginger Gold and Gala, runs through Honeycrisp and Fuji in September, and ends the last weekend of October. Peach picking covers late June through August. On peak fall weekends Albemarle County manages traffic from the bottom of the hill and the farm runs timed-entry tickets. Weekday mornings are quiet and the long view across the valley is at its best before noon, before haze rises.
