Kish Island
— — the shipwreck the tide keeps revealing.
Not only on a wall.
“A coral island in the Persian Gulf, about ninety-one square kilometers of white sand and shallow turquoise water. On the western shore the rusted Greek freighter has been beached since 1966, photographed at every sunset since. Old Harireh sits on the north side, a medieval town half excavated and half drifted over. Warm wind, flat horizon, very little hurry. from the studio
Kish 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.
Kish is an oval coral island in the Persian Gulf, roughly 91 square kilometers in area and about 18 kilometers off the southern coast of Iran near Bandar Lengeh, administered as part of Hormozgan Province. The island is run as a free trade zone by the Kish Free Zone Organization and is one of the few Iranian destinations open to most foreign nationals without a pre-arranged visa. The terrain is low and flat — the highest point sits around 35 meters — with a fringing reef and pale calcium-sand beaches around most of the coast.
The water around Kish reads as a wide band of turquoise from the air, the same shallow Persian Gulf shelf that supports the island's coral reef and dolphin pods. The west coast is dominated by the wreck of the Greek freighter Koula F, run aground in 1966 and left in place. Snorkeling and glass-bottom boat tours operate from the south side. The surrounding sea averages around 33 degrees Celsius in August.
Harireh, on the northern coast, is the ruin of a medieval town that flourished between roughly the 8th and 16th centuries CE under successive Buyid, Seljuk, and Ilkhanid administrations, when Kish was a major Indian Ocean trade emporium for pearls and spices. The exposed walls cover about 120 hectares and include a congregational mosque, a bathhouse, and residential courtyards. Marco Polo describes the island's pearl trade in his account of the late 13th century.