Spetses
— — the hooves on stone after midnight.
Not only on a wall.
“An island in the Saronic Gulf, a couple of nautical miles off the Argolic coast. Cars are largely banned in Spetses town, so movement is by horse-drawn carriage, scooter, or foot along the harbourfront promenade. The island carried much of the Greek naval effort in the 1821 War of Independence; the statue of Laskarina Bouboulina still stands above the old harbour. Pine forest covers the interior.
Spetses, 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.
Spetses sits at the south end of the Saronic Gulf, roughly 60 nautical miles southwest of Piraeus and only about 400 metres from the Peloponnese mainland at the nearest crossing. The island covers around 22 square kilometres, with a permanent population near 4,000. Spetses town wraps the north coast in two harbours: the Dapia, where the ferries arrive, and the Palaio Limani, the old wooden-boat harbour to the east. Pine forest covers most of the inland slopes, replanted in the early twentieth century by Sotirios Anargyros.
The island's modern identity dates from the 1821 Greek War of Independence, when Spetsiot shipowners turned their merchant fleet into a fighting force. Laskarina Bouboulina, born to a Hydriot family and twice widowed, commanded the corvette Agamemnon and led the naval blockade of Nafplio; her bronze statue overlooks the Dapia harbour. The Battle of Spetses on September 8, 1822, when the small Greek fleet held off a larger Ottoman force in the Argolic Gulf, is reenacted annually on the weekend nearest the date, with fireworks over the harbour and a memorial service.
Private cars have been restricted on Spetses since the 1990s; in practice, only a few permitted vehicles use the inner roads. Horse-drawn carriages line the Dapia for hires by the route or the hour. Scooters and small motorcycles are available from rentals near the harbour, and the perimeter road around the island is roughly 25 kilometres, an easy half-day on two wheels. Water taxis cross to the mainland fishing villages of Kosta and Porto Heli on demand from the old harbour.