Vis
— — a harbour the open sea forgot to reach.
Not only on a wall.
“An Adriatic island that sat closed to outsiders for forty years, used by the Yugoslav navy, opened to visitors only in 1989. Two small towns face each other across a low spine of vineyards — Vis on the eastern bay, Komiža on the west, with the Vugava grape working the slopes between them. The light off the limestone reads almost white at noon and goes amber by evening. The water at Stiniva cove is the colour glass holds before it cools. Boats leave for the Blue Cave on Biševo most mornings the sea is flat. — from the studio
Vis, 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.
Vis is the farthest inhabited Croatian island from the mainland, about 45 kilometres south of Split in the central Dalmatian archipelago. Two towns hold most of the roughly 3,400 residents — Vis on the northeast bay, Komiža facing southwest toward the smaller island of Biševo. The Yugoslav People's Army kept the island closed to foreign visitors from the late 1940s until 1989, which is why the coastline reads less developed than Hvar or Brač. Catamarans from Split run roughly twice daily and take about two and a half hours. The highest point is Hum, at 587 metres.
The cove at Stiniva, on the south coast below Mount Hum, was voted Europe's best beach in 2016 by the European Best Destinations panel. Two cliff walls close almost to a slit at the entrance and open to a small white-pebble bay inside. A few kilometres west, the Blue Cave on Biševo lights up between roughly 11 a.m. and noon, when sunlight enters through an underwater opening and refracts upward through the seawater. Small boats from Komiža run the trip when the bora is down. The colour holds for less than an hour each day.
Vis works on a Mediterranean cycle. The Vugava grape, indigenous to the island, is harvested in late August and early September, when the day boats from Split thin out and the konobas in Komiža keep longer hours. June and September read warm and quiet; July and August carry the high-season crowd that follows the 2018 Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again location buzz. Ferry frequency drops sharply in November and rebuilds in April. Olive harvest runs through October. Winter sea temperatures sit around 14 °C and the island holds roughly half its summer population.