Iturup
— — an island the fog keeps to itself.
Not only on a wall.
“A long volcanic island in the southern Kurils, set between Hokkaido and the Sea of Okhotsk. Iturup is the largest of the chain. Pumice cliffs, fumarole fields, brown bears, hot springs running into cold coves. Most days a heavy fog rolls in from the Pacific and stays until it is ready to leave. The town of Kurilsk holds about sixteen hundred people; the rest of the island holds itself.
Iturup, 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.
Iturup is the largest island in the Kuril archipelago, about 200 km long and roughly 3,200 km² in area, set between Hokkaido and Urup in the southern chain. Russia administers it as part of Sakhalin Oblast; Japan also claims it as Etorofu, one of the four Northern Territories disputed since 1945. The main settlement, Kurilsk, sits on Kitovy Bay and serves about 1,600 residents. Iturup Airport opened in 2014, giving regular flights to Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk on Sakhalin.
The island holds at least nine volcanoes, several still active, including Atsonupuri at 1,205 m on the southern peninsula and Baranskogo with its boiling springs. Along the Sea of Okhotsk coast, the Belye Skaly — White Rocks — are a long wall of pumice that surf has cut into pale corridors and slot canyons. Beaches of black sand meet pumice grit at the base. The southeast coast holds Kasatka Bay, the sheltered anchorage from which the Imperial Japanese Navy sailed for Pearl Harbor in November 1941.
Population on Iturup is roughly 6,400 across the entire island, most of it clustered in Kurilsk and Reidovo. Outside the towns, the interior is volcanic plateau, dwarf pine, and brown-bear country. Heavy maritime fog from the cold Oyashio current covers the coast for much of summer; winter brings deep snow and pack ice in the strait. No public roads connect Iturup to the outside world — ferry from Korsakov on Sakhalin or the small jet from Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk are the only ways in.