Flores Island
— — green the rain keeps writing into the cliffs.
Not only on a wall.
“A volcanic island at the western edge of the Azores, closer to Newfoundland than to mainland Portugal. Cliffs drop straight into the Atlantic; waterfalls find their way down them in long white threads after every rain, which is most days. Hydrangeas line the field walls in July and August, planted as living fences. The island is small enough to drive around in an afternoon and quiet enough that the road usually has nothing on it.
Flores 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.
Flores is the westernmost island of the Azores archipelago and the westernmost point of geographical Europe, lying about 1,800 kilometres west of Lisbon on the North American tectonic plate. The island is volcanic, roughly 17 kilometres long, with a population near 3,800 across the parishes of Santa Cruz das Flores and Lajes das Flores. It was designated a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve in 2009. The interior holds seven crater lakes; the coast is ringed by basalt cliffs that drop several hundred metres straight into the Atlantic.
The island averages over 1,600 millimetres of rain a year, and the basalt is porous, so the water finds its way out through the cliffs as waterfalls. The Poço da Ribeira do Ferreiro near Fajã Grande gathers more than twenty separate falls into a single moss-walled amphitheatre, fed by snowmelt and rain off the central plateau. The Poço do Bacalhau, also near Fajã Grande, drops about 90 metres in a single thread. The falls run heaviest in winter and spring; by September several thin to a trickle.
The hydrangeas bloom from late June into August, lining the field boundaries planted by Azorean farmers as living fences against the wind. The colour runs blue on the acid volcanic soil. Whale season offshore runs roughly April through October, when sperm whales pass close to the island; the local cooperative at Lajes operates small-boat trips most days the swell allows. Winter brings the heaviest weather and the largest waterfalls; flights from Faial and Terceira are cancelled often enough that travellers build in slack.