Sirri Island
— — a low island the Gulf keeps quiet.
Not only on a wall.
“A small flat island in the Persian Gulf, west of the better-known Qeshm and Kish, belonging to Hormozgan Province. Pearl divers once worked these waters. Now an oil and gas terminal sits at one end and a small fishing town at the other. The reefs are still there, and the water still goes that pale Gulf blue when the wind drops at midday.
Sirri 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.
Sirri is a small low-lying island in the Persian Gulf, part of Hormozgan Province and administered through Bandar Lengeh County. It covers roughly 17 square kilometres and lies about 50 kilometres off the Iranian mainland, west of Qeshm and east of Kish. The land barely rises above the water; the highest point reaches only a few metres of elevation. A small civilian population shares the island with the workers of an offshore oil and gas terminal, and the airport handles light traffic between the island, Kish, and the mainland.
The Gulf around Sirri runs shallow and very warm, with surface temperatures climbing past 32 degrees Celsius in summer and dropping into the low twenties in January. The waters were part of the historic pearling grounds that fed the Bandar Lengeh and Dubai trade in the nineteenth century. Coral patches still grow on the reefs around the island, though heat stress has thinned them. Local fishermen work small boats out of the southern landing, mostly for hamour, kingfish, and shrimp.
Sirri is not a tourist island in the way Kish and Qeshm are. The Sirri Oil and Gas Terminal occupies the eastern end and shapes most of the working life on the island. The small airport handles a handful of weekly flights, mostly worker rotations through Kish or Bandar Abbas. The town itself is a few rows of low concrete houses near the southern coast, a school, a clinic, a mosque, and the boats. Visitors travelling independently typically arrange permission through the nearest port authority on the mainland.