Killarney
— — the morning the cloud lifts off the lake.
Not only on a wall.
“The first national park in Ireland and still the wettest greens on the island. Three lakes pool at the foot of MacGillycuddy's Reeks: Lough Leane the largest, Muckross and the Upper Lake stepping back into the mountains. Native oak woodlands hold the slopes, and the only native herd of red deer in the country moves through them. The light comes and goes with the rain. People take the long boat through the gap and nobody says much.
Killarney, 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.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
The place, in three passes.
Killarney sits in County Kerry in the southwest of Ireland, on the eastern shoulder of the Iveragh Peninsula and the northern flank of MacGillycuddy's Reeks. The town gives directly onto Killarney National Park, established in 1932 as the first national park in Ireland and now covering 102.89 km² of lake, oak woodland, and mountain. The park holds Ireland's only native herd of red deer, the country's largest remnant of native sessile oakwood, and its highest peak, Carrauntoohil, at 1,038 m. The town itself recorded a population of about 14,500 at the 2022 census. It is reached from Cork in roughly ninety minutes by road, or from Dublin in three and a half hours by Iarnród Éireann rail service into Killarney station on the Mallow to Tralee line.
The three Lakes of Killarney lie in a stepped chain at the foot of MacGillycuddy's Reeks. Lough Leane, the Lower Lake, is the largest at about 19 km² and the only one open to motorboats. Muckross Lake (the Middle Lake) and the Upper Lake are connected to Lough Leane by the Long Range river through the Meeting of the Waters at Dinis Cottage. The lakes drain glacially carved valleys; the bedrock is Old Red Sandstone overlain by Carboniferous limestone, which is why the water reads dark and peat-stained rather than the turquoise of high-alpine glacial lakes. Lough Leane holds Innisfallen Island, where the monastic site traditionally founded around 640 AD by Saint Finian the Leper survives in ruin.
Killarney National Park is open through the year at no charge, with the main visitor centre at Muckross House, a 65-room Victorian mansion opened to the public in 1932 as part of the founding gift from Arthur Vincent and his American parents-in-law, William Bowers Bourn and Agnes Moody Bourn. Ross Castle on the shore of Lough Leane runs guided tours from March to October, and Muckross Abbey, founded as a Franciscan friary around 1448 by Donal McCarthy Mór, is freely accessible by foot. The Gap of Dunloe is best walked, cycled, or taken by jaunting car (the local horse-and-trap) from Kate Kearney's Cottage at the northern end. The traditional crossing pairs the gap with a boat south across the Upper Lake and down the Long Range to Ross Castle.