Smith Mountain Lake
— a long quiet water held between two ridges.
Not only on a wall.
Smith Mountain Lake, 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 lake wholly inside Virginia. Twenty thousand acres of water held back by Smith Mountain Dam, finished in 1963 by Appalachian Power on the Roanoke River. Five hundred miles of shoreline across Bedford, Franklin, and Pittsylvania counties. The lake is doing two jobs at once — pumped-storage hydroelectric for the grid above, recreational for the families on the banks below. State park on the north shore. Quiet coves on the south. A long, slow lake in the soft hills southeast of Roanoke. from the studio
The place, in three passes.
Smith Mountain Lake is a reservoir on the Roanoke and Blackwater rivers in the foothills southeast of Roanoke, Virginia, straddling Bedford, Franklin, and Pittsylvania counties. The lake covers about 20,600 acres at full pond and has roughly 500 miles of shoreline, making it the second-largest lake in Virginia by surface area and the largest entirely within state lines. The reservoir formed when Appalachian Power finished Smith Mountain Dam in 1963 as part of a pumped-storage hydroelectric project paired with the smaller Leesville Lake downstream. Normal pool sits near 795 feet above sea level.
The Roanoke River enters from the west and the Blackwater River from the south, joining inside the lake's two main arms. Average depth is about 55 feet, with the deepest sections near the dam reaching about 250 feet. The dam itself is 235 feet tall and 816 feet across, with a power station rated at 636 megawatts that pumps water up during low demand and releases it back through the turbines during peak load. Water quality is monitored by Ferrum College through a long-running citizen-science program that has tracked the lake since 1986.
Smith Mountain Lake State Park sits on the north shore in Bedford County with 1,250 acres of trail, a swimming beach, cabins, and a campground. The lake is open to bass, striper, and catfish fishing year-round under Virginia freshwater regulations, with the spring striped bass run drawing tournament fields from across the Mid-Atlantic. Most of the lake's marinas cluster around the Hales Ford Bridge on Route 122, the main crossing between the two largest arms. The nearest city is Roanoke, about thirty miles northwest by car.
