Positano
— a cliff the colour of fruit, just before dusk.
Not only on a wall.
“A cliffside village on the Amalfi Coast, south of Naples, where pastel houses fall in tiers to the sea. The majolica dome of Santa Maria Assunta holds the centre, its green and yellow tile catching the light over Marina Grande's grey-sand beach. Lemon groves climb the terraces above. John Steinbeck wrote in 1953 that Positano 'bites deep,' that it becomes real after you've left. Most visitors arrive by ferry from Sorrento or Salerno; the coastal road is narrow enough that buses pass each other slowly. The light at six in the evening turns every face of the cliff the colour of a peach.
Positano, 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.
Positano sits on the Amalfi Coast in the Campania region of southern Italy, roughly 60 kilometres south of Naples and 16 kilometres west of Amalfi town. The village is built vertically into a steep cliff above a small bay, with a population of about 3,800. It is part of the UNESCO World Heritage area inscribed in 1997 covering the Amalfi Coast (Costiera Amalfitana). The single coastal road, the SS163 or Amalfi Drive completed in the 1850s, threads above the town; most visitors arrive by ferry from Sorrento, Amalfi, or Salerno during the April-to-October season. The cliffside hike known as the Sentiero degli Dei (the Path of the Gods) ends above Positano at the village of Nocelle.
The colour reads as a layered wash because Positano was built up by households painting individually over centuries, working in peach, ochre, rose, terracotta, cream, and occasional jade against the green of lemon-grove terraces and the limestone grey of the Lattari cliffs. At the centre, the majolica dome of Santa Maria Assunta holds a geometric pattern of tile in green, yellow, and blue; the church took its current form in the 18th century above a much older parish. The Byzantine icon inside, the Madonna di Positano, gave the town its name by tradition: sailors heard the icon say posa ('put me down') and built her a chapel. The light at evening lifts every facade by one tone.
The shoulder seasons, May to early June and September to October, give Positano its best light and thinnest crowds; the August window draws ferries and coaches from the entire Bay of Naples and the village runs to capacity. Ferry routes from Sorrento, Amalfi, Capri, and Salerno operate April through October via Travelmar and Alicost; in winter most boats stop. The SS163 above the town is two lanes wide for much of its length and clogs in peak season; the SITA bus service runs the coast from Sorrento and Amalfi when the road is open. The Sentiero degli Dei from Bomerano to Nocelle, the high-line approach to the village, takes about three hours over roughly seven kilometres.