Robinson Crusoe Island
— — the island that gave Defoe his story.
Not only on a wall.
“A volcanic island in the Juan Fernández Archipelago, far out in the Pacific west of Valparaíso. The Scottish sailor Alexander Selkirk lived alone here for four years and four months after he asked to be put ashore in 1704; Daniel Defoe used his story for Robinson Crusoe. Today the village of San Juan Bautista holds about 900 people on the bay below the high green ridges.
Robinson Crusoe Island, 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.
Robinson Crusoe Island, formally Isla Robinson Crusoe, is the largest inhabited island of the Juan Fernández Archipelago, a Chilean territory in the South Pacific roughly 670 km west of the port of Valparaíso. The island covers about 48 square kilometres and rises to 916 metres at Cerro El Yunque. It was named Más a Tierra until 1966, when the Chilean government renamed it for Defoe's novel and renamed the smaller western island Alejandro Selkirk Island for the real castaway. The main settlement is San Juan Bautista, on Cumberland Bay on the north coast, with a population of around 900.
In October 1704 the Scottish privateer Alexander Selkirk, sailing with William Dampier's expedition, judged his ship unseaworthy and asked the captain to put him ashore on Más a Tierra. He lived alone on the island for four years and four months until the privateer Woodes Rogers picked him up in February 1709. Selkirk's account, published on his return to England, reached Daniel Defoe, whose 1719 novel The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe drew heavily on it. The lookout point above the village where Selkirk watched for ships, El Mirador de Selkirk, is now a Chilean National Monument.
The island is reached by small-aircraft charter from Santiago via the airstrip at the western end of the island, a one-way flight of about two and a half hours, then a four-hour open-boat transfer around the coast to Cumberland Bay. A monthly Chilean Navy supply ship also serves the archipelago. The full archipelago is protected as Juan Fernández National Park, designated a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 1977; the endemic flora includes the Juan Fernández firetree and the islands' own hummingbird. San Juan Bautista was largely destroyed by the 2010 Chile tsunami and has been substantially rebuilt.