Lesbos
— — the island Sappho wrote from.
Not only on a wall.
“Third-largest of the Greek islands, and the quietest of the big ones. Olive groves run from the spine of the mountains down to small stone harbours. Mytilene holds the east; Molyvos crowns the north with a Genoese castle above red roofs. Plomari distills the ouzo most of Greece drinks. In the west, an entire petrified forest stands where the volcanoes left it, twenty million years ago. from the studio
Lesbos, 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.
Lesbos is the third-largest Greek island, with an area of about 1,633 square kilometres and a coastline of roughly 320 kilometres. It sits in the north Aegean, about ten kilometres off the Turkish coast at its closest point, with the capital Mytilene on the eastern shore. The island is the historic home of the seventh-century BCE poet Sappho, born in Eresos on the western side. Lesbos holds more than eleven million olive trees, the densest grove count of any Greek island.
The Petrified Forest of Lesbos, in the western half of the island around Sigri, was preserved by volcanic ash about twenty million years ago in the early Miocene. Standing and fallen tree trunks of sequoia, pine, oak, and palm are exposed across more than 15,000 hectares; the largest standing trunk measures 7.2 metres. The site joined the UNESCO Global Geopark network in 2015. The Natural History Museum of the Petrified Forest in Sigri opened in 1994 to interpret it.
Lesbos is reached by overnight ferry from Piraeus, a crossing of about eleven hours, or by short flights from Athens and Thessaloniki into Mytilene airport. The island is large enough that a car is the practical way to move between Mytilene, Molyvos in the north, and Sigri in the west. Plomari, on the south coast, is the home of most ouzo sold in Greece, including the Barbayanni distillery, working since 1860. The summer high season runs from June through early September.