Isla de la Juventud
— — the island that kept changing its name.
Not only on a wall.
“Cuba's second island, about a hundred kilometres south of the mainland across the Gulf of Batabano. Long called the Isle of Pines for its hills of Caribbean pine, renamed in 1978 for the youth brigades. Nueva Gerona sits in the north, low marble hills behind it. The Presidio Modelo still stands east of town, four round cell blocks open to the sky. The reefs off Punta Frances hold some of the clearest water in the Caribbean. — from the studio
Isla de la Juventud, 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 de la Juventud is Cuba's second-largest island and a special municipality directly administered from Havana. It lies about a hundred kilometres south of the main island, across the shallow Gulf of Batabano, with a land area near 2,200 square kilometres and a population around 85,000. The capital is Nueva Gerona in the north. Known for centuries as the Isle of Pines for its endemic pine forests, the island was renamed in 1978 in recognition of the international student brigades the Cuban government settled here in the 1960s and 1970s.
The Presidio Modelo, on the eastern edge of Nueva Gerona, was built between 1926 and 1931 under President Gerardo Machado, modelled on the panopticon design of the Stateville prison in Illinois. Four circular cell blocks, each five stories tall and ringed with open galleries around a central watch tower, held up to six thousand prisoners. Fidel and Raul Castro were imprisoned here from 1953 to 1955 after the Moncada Barracks attack. The prison closed in 1967 and now operates as a museum, the cell blocks left open to weather.
The southern coast of the island sits inside the Punta Frances Marine National Park, established in 1998 and known among divers for some of the clearest water in the Caribbean. Wall dives along the shelf drop into deep blue past stands of black coral and sea fan. The reefs hold reef sharks, tarpon, and goliath grouper. Access is regulated: divers go through Hotel Colony on the western coast or the marine park base offshore. Visibility often exceeds thirty metres in the dry season from December through April.