Bawean Island
— — the island that sends its sons out and waits.
Not only on a wall.
“A small volcanic island in the Java Sea, about 150 kilometres north of Surabaya. Two extinct cones, a freshwater crater lake at the centre, and a coastline of fishing villages. The Bawean deer lives only here, and almost nowhere else on earth. Most of the men have spent at least one season away — Singapore, Malaysia, the Gulf — which is the island's own kind of stillness. The boats come back when they come back.
Bawean Island, 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.
Bawean is a small volcanic island in the Java Sea, administered as two districts of Gresik Regency in East Java province, Indonesia. It lies roughly 150 kilometres north of Surabaya and covers about 200 square kilometres. The interior is shaped by two extinct stratovolcanoes and holds Danau Kastoba, a freshwater crater lake near the centre. The population is around 70,000, with the Bawean people speaking their own language related to Madurese, and a long-established tradition of seasonal labour migration known as merantau.
Bawean is reached by ferry from Gresik on the East Java coast, a crossing of roughly nine hours by slow boat or three by fast craft, weather permitting. There is one small airport with limited service. The interior roads are quiet; many villages are still organised around the call to prayer and the tide. Because so many men work overseas on long contracts, the household economy and much of village life is held together by women, who run the markets, the boats home, and the schools.
Bawean is the only home of the Bawean deer, Axis kuhlii, a small forest deer found nowhere else and classified as Critically Endangered on the IUCN Red List. The 4,556-hectare Bawean Island Wildlife Reserve protects the remaining habitat in the island's hill forests, with fewer than 300 mature individuals estimated in the wild. The species was first described in 1836. Local guides operate from villages near the reserve boundary.