Inyan Kara Mountain
— a stone that names itself.
Not only on a wall.
Inyan Kara Mountain, 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.
“A timbered peak rising alone from the western edge of the Black Hills, west of Sundance. The Lakota name means 'stone-made.' Custer's 1874 expedition carved a date into a rock near the summit on the way to confirming gold in the hills. The mountain stands on private and state land now, ringed by ranch road and ponderosa. Most days the only sound is wind through the pines.
The place, in three passes.
Inyan Kara Mountain rises to 6,368 feet in the western Black Hills of Crook County, Wyoming, about ten miles southwest of Sundance. The name comes from the Lakota Iŋyaŋ Káǧa, often translated as 'stone-made' or 'rock-maker,' and the mountain is sacred in Lakota tradition. George Armstrong Custer's expedition camped at its base in July 1874 on the march that would announce gold in the Black Hills. Today the summit lies on a mix of private and Wyoming state trust land, ringed by ponderosa pine and working ranch.
The peak is a laccolith — an intrusion of igneous rock that pushed up through the sedimentary Black Hills uplift and now stands above the surrounding plain. Its core is phonolite, the same kin of rock that built Devils Tower about thirty-five miles to the north. Erosion has stripped the softer sediments from its flanks. The summit ridge holds a carved inscription left by a member of Custer's 1874 column, the letters still readable in the soft volcanic stone after a hundred and fifty winters.
Inyan Kara stands away from the highways and away from the busier ridges around Mount Rushmore and Sundance. Access crosses private ranchland, so the peak sees few visitors in any given week. The mountain is sacred to the Lakota and to other Plains peoples, and approaches are made with that history in mind. Wind through the ponderosa is the dominant sound; meadowlarks call from the lower meadows in summer. Nights here, away from town light, hold some of the darker skies in Wyoming.
