Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego
— — the island the wind never quite finishes with.
Not only on a wall.
“The great island at the southern tip of the Americas, divided between Chile and Argentina by a north-south line drawn through peat bog and lenga forest. The Chilean half holds the western coast and the south, the empty quarter where Karukinka now protects more than a quarter of a million hectares of subantarctic woodland. Porvenir, the small wind-flayed town on Bahía Inútil, is the Chilean gateway across the strait from Punta Arenas. The Selk'nam called the island Karukinka. The wind comes in off the Pacific almost every day. from the studio
Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego, 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.
Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego is the largest island in South America, covering about 47,992 square kilometres at the continent's southern tip. The island is divided along the 68° 36' west meridian: Argentina holds the eastern third, Chile the western two-thirds and the south. The Strait of Magellan separates it from the mainland to the north, the Beagle Channel runs along its southern edge. The Chilean side belongs to the Magallanes Region, with Porvenir as the provincial capital on Bahía Inútil.
The Chilean south of the island is one of the emptier landscapes in the inhabited world. Karukinka Natural Park, established in 2004 and managed by the Wildlife Conservation Society, protects roughly 300,000 hectares of lenga and ñire forest, peatland, and steppe along the Cordillera Darwin foothills. The name Karukinka comes from the Selk'nam, the indigenous people of the island, whose population was reduced to near-extinction by the late nineteenth-century sheep frontier. Most of the southern interior has no road access at all.
The Chilean side is reached from Punta Arenas on the mainland, either by the Cruz Australis ferry across the Primera Angostura narrows in about twenty minutes or by the longer Punta Arenas to Porvenir crossing of about two and a half hours on the Pathagon ferry. There is no road bridge. Porvenir has a small airfield with light flights from Punta Arenas. The Karukinka park requires advance arrangement through WCS Chile, and weather can close access for days. Sub-antarctic conditions year-round.