Nan Madol
— — a city of basalt built on the reef.
Not only on a wall.
“A ruined ceremonial city of around 92 artificial islets laid across a tidal lagoon, in Madolenihmw district on the southeast coast of Pohnpei. The walls are stacked basalt columns, some weighing fifty tons, hauled from the other side of the island and fitted without mortar. The Saudeleur dynasty built it between roughly 1180 and 1500 CE. Mangroves have moved in. Tide carries through the channels twice a day, the way it has for eight hundred years. UNESCO inscribed the site in 2016 and listed it as endangered the same day. — from the studio
Nan Madol, 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.
Nan Madol sits in a shallow lagoon off the southeastern coast of Pohnpei, in Madolenihmw district, Federated States of Micronesia. The site comprises about 92 artificial islets spread across roughly 75 hectares, separated by tidal channels and enclosed by an outer seawall. It was the ceremonial and political centre of the Saudeleur dynasty, built between roughly 1180 and 1500 CE, with construction continuing under the later Nahnmwarki chiefs. UNESCO inscribed the site as a World Heritage Site in 2016, and on the same day added it to the List of World Heritage in Danger because of advancing mangroves, siltation, and structural collapse.
The construction material is columnar basalt — naturally six-sided prisms split by ancient lava cooling at the volcanic plug at Sokehs and other quarries on the opposite side of Pohnpei. Builders stacked the columns log-cabin style, alternating headers and stretchers, without mortar. Individual stones run up to about 50 tons; the largest single piece on the royal mortuary islet of Nandauwas is estimated near 55 tons. How the Saudeleur moved them roughly 25 km by sea around the island is not settled. The walls at Nandauwas reach about 7.6 metres at their highest surviving course.
The channels between the islets are tidal, fed by the lagoon, and run shallow enough at low water that small canoes still scrape bottom. Sea level around Pohnpei has risen measurably over the past century, and the site sits less than a metre above mean high water; mangroves have taken hold inside several of the islets and their roots are levering basalt courses apart. Pohnpei receives some of the heaviest rainfall in the world, roughly 4,800 mm a year in the interior. Access is by small boat from Madolenihmw at high tide; visitor numbers are low, in part because of customary land-tenure rules that require local permission.