Milos
— — the white the volcano left behind.
Not only on a wall.
“A volcanic island in the southwestern Cyclades, smaller and stranger than its neighbours. The shore at Sarakiniko reads as bone, white rhyolite worn smooth by the Aegean. The fishing villages keep their boat garages painted in flat blocks of red and ochre. Most of the coast is reached by boat or not at all.
Milos, 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.
Milos sits at the southwestern edge of the Cyclades, about 86 nautical miles from Piraeus by ferry. The island covers roughly 151 square kilometres and is home to around 5,300 residents, most of them clustered in Adamantas, the port, and Plaka, the hilltop capital. Its horseshoe shape is the rim of a flooded volcanic caldera, which gives the island both its long natural harbour and the mineral wealth (bentonite, perlite, kaolin) that has been mined here since antiquity. The Venus de Milo was found on this island in 1820.
The shoreline at Sarakiniko is white rhyolitic tuff, ash-and-pumice rock from eruptions that ended roughly 90,000 years ago. Wind and the Aegean have polished it smooth, with shallow channels carved by winter storms. The Kleftiko caves on the southwest coast, named for the pirates who once sheltered there, are the same volcanic rock cut by the sea. A short walk inland the colour shifts again to the ochres and rust-reds of the obsidian beds the Bronze Age miners worked on the east side of the island.
Most visitors arrive by ferry from Piraeus, a passage of three to seven hours depending on the boat, or by a short flight to Milos National Airport. The peak season runs from June through early September, with July and August the busiest and hottest months. Many of the headline coves, including Kleftiko and Sykia, are reached only by sea, so a half-day boat tour from Adamantas is the usual route. The painted fishing village of Klima, west of the port, is also a walk-in only.