Inis Mór
— limestone walls running all the way to the sea.
Not only on a wall.
“The largest of the three Aran Islands, twelve kilometres of bare karst laced with stone walls older than memory. Dun Aonghasa, the prehistoric fort, sits on a hundred-metre cliff above the open Atlantic. The islanders still speak Irish at home, and the ferry from Rossaveel makes the crossing in about forty minutes when the bay allows.
Inis Mór, 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.
Inis Mor, sometimes spelled Inishmore, is the largest of the three Aran Islands at the mouth of Galway Bay on Ireland's west coast. It runs about 12 km from end to end and is home to roughly 800 year-round residents. The bedrock is Carboniferous limestone, the same karst that forms The Burren on the mainland. The principal village, Kilronan, faces east toward the harbour. Ferries cross from Rossaveel in County Galway in about 40 minutes; a longer summer service runs from Doolin in County Clare.
Dun Aonghasa, on the southwest cliff edge, is the most striking of the island's prehistoric stone forts: three concentric drystone walls built directly on a cliff that drops about 100 m to the Atlantic. Excavations date the earliest construction to around 1100 BC, with major rebuilding in the early medieval period. The island also holds Dun Eochla, Dun Eoghanachta, and the Seven Churches, an early Christian monastic site. The walled fields between them were built by hand from cleared surface limestone.
Inis Mor is a Gaeltacht, an officially Irish-speaking community, and the language is the first one heard in school, in pubs, and at home. The island has almost no through traffic; most visitors rent bicycles in Kilronan or hire a minibus. Outside the summer months the ferry runs less often and the weather decides the day. From the cliff edge at Dun Aonghasa, the next land due west is Newfoundland, more than 3,000 km across the open Atlantic.