Parke's Castle

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.

Parke's Castle stands on the eastern shore of Lough Gill in County Leitrim, Ireland, about ten kilometres east of Sligo town along the R286 lake road. The lake straddles the Leitrim and Sligo county boundary, and the castle keeps the Leitrim side.

The castle was built around 1610 by Captain Robert Parke, an English settler granted land during the Plantation of Leitrim. He raised the three-storey manor and the bawn enclosure on the site of an earlier O'Rourke tower house he had been granted to occupy.

A tower house of the O'Rourke clan, lords of West Bréifne. The previous chieftain, Brian na Múrtha O'Rourke, was executed at Tyburn in London in 1591 for sheltering Captain Francisco de Cuéllar, a Spanish Armada officer who later wrote a vivid account of his escape across Ireland.

Parke's Castle stands on Lough Gill, the lake of W.B. Yeats's poem 'The Lake Isle of Innisfree.' Innisfree itself sits in the lake a few kilometres west of the castle and is signposted from a layby on the R286 lake road.

The Office of Public Works carried out a long restoration of the gatehouse, the bawn enclosure, and the three-storey manor block from the 1970s into the early 1990s. The roof timbers and floors were re-cut by hand from native Irish oak using traditional joinery.

The site is open seasonally, typically from spring through October. The Office of Public Works publishes hours and admission each year on heritageireland.ie. Guided tours run on the hour through the gatehouse, the manor block, and the bawn courtyard.

This carries well as a gift for someone with roots around Lough Gill or the wider Sligo and Leitrim area. The castle and the lake are central to the visual memory of summers on the lake drive and to W.B. Yeats's Innisfree country. A Small or Medium with a handwritten note from the studio sits naturally on a desk or hallway shelf.

The stained-glass treatment of grey stone against still lake water reads well in Cottage-Irish interiors built on oak, slate, and wool, in Castle Modern rooms with deep colour and natural fibres, and in Jewel-tone Maximalist spaces. The blues, greys, and lake-greens hold a wall without crowding what is already on it.

Both Castlecore and the Atlantic Heritage thread running through Irish interiors press lean on weathered stone, deep colour, and a sense of long time. This tile sits in both registers, with the lake reflection giving an Atlantic-coastal note and the bawn wall giving the Castlecore line.

A single Large tile sits well above a console or a reading chair. Above a full sofa, a four-tile Mural reads cleanly, and a nine-tile Mural carries a long sectional wall. The Triptych also works above a bed where the wall is wider than tall.

Yes. For wet locations, choose the Dura Satin or Matte finish rather than Glossy. The colour is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure and lives beneath a thin protective layer, so steam and splashing do not affect the surface.

A soft microfibre cloth and water. No abrasives, no ammonia cleaners, no powdered scrub. The surface is sealed beneath a thin protective layer and will not stain from normal kitchen or bathroom contact, and a Coaster Set lives the same way under a hot mug.

Yes. Every WenderVista piece is created in our Knoxville studio and is original to Wender Studios. The artwork is not licensed, not stock, and not made for any other shop. Reid Wender, the curator, chooses what enters the atlas of places.