Heard Island and McDonald Islands
— — an active volcano alone in the southern sea.
Not only on a wall.
“An Australian territory in the southern Indian Ocean, roughly four thousand kilometres southwest of Perth and a thousand kilometres north of Antarctica. No permanent residents. Big Ben rises from the sea to 2,745 metres, capped by Mawson Peak, an active volcano that has erupted several times in the past two decades. King penguins, elephant seals, and a glacier shelf that has been retreating for fifty years. Almost no one ever lands.
Heard Island and McDonald Islands, 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.
The place, in three passes.
Heard Island and the McDonald Islands form an Australian external territory in the southern Indian Ocean, about 4,100 kilometres southwest of Perth and 1,700 kilometres north of mainland Antarctica. Heard is the larger of the two, covering 368 square kilometres, almost entirely glaciated. The McDonald Islands lie 44 kilometres to the west and cover less than three square kilometres of land. UNESCO inscribed the group as a World Heritage Site in 1997 for its near-pristine sub-Antarctic ecosystems and ongoing volcanic activity at Mawson Peak.
The islands sit in the Furious Fifties, the band of westerly winds south of fifty degrees latitude where almost no land breaks the wind's run around the globe. Average annual temperature on Heard Island is near zero degrees Celsius, with summer highs rarely above five. Cloud and fog cover the peak most days, and clear views of Big Ben are unusual. Australian Antarctic Division expeditions reach the island roughly once a decade, weather permitting. Landings often take days of waiting and are sometimes cancelled outright.
No human has wintered on Heard Island since 1955, when the Australian National Antarctic Research Expedition closed its Atlas Cove station. The McDonald Islands have rarely been landed on at all. The wildlife runs the place. An estimated two million macaroni penguins breed on Heard each summer, alongside king penguins, southern elephant seals, and leopard seals. Mawson Peak has erupted several times since 2000, observed almost entirely by passing satellites and the rare research vessel diverted off course by the swell.