Gorée
— — the pink wall the Atlantic keeps washing.
Not only on a wall.
“Less than a square kilometre of basalt and coral, anchored a short crossing from Dakar harbour. Pastel houses lean over narrow lanes. Bougainvillea spills off the upper balconies. The Maison des Esclaves sits at the centre of why people come, and the island holds that weight without flinching. There are no cars. The ferry leaves Dakar every two hours and the light off the water in the late afternoon turns the ochre walls the colour of rust. from the studio
Gorée, 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.
Île de Gorée is a small island of roughly 0.28 square kilometres off the coast of Dakar, Senegal, reached by a twenty-minute ferry from the mainland. Held in turn by the Portuguese, Dutch, English, and French between the 15th and 19th centuries, it served as one of the largest slave-trading centres on the African coast. UNESCO inscribed the island on the World Heritage List in 1978. About 1,800 people live on it today, in a commune attached to the city of Dakar.
The architecture is colonial-era, mostly 18th- and 19th-century, built in coral stone and lime render and painted in the ochres, pinks, and pale yellows that the salt air keeps weathering back. The Maison des Esclaves, restored in 1962 and run as a memorial museum, is the most-visited building on the island; its Door of No Return faces directly out to the Atlantic. The Fort d'Estrées, a circular fort completed in 1856, now houses the IFAN Historical Museum.
Ferries run from the Dakar terminal on Boulevard de la Libération roughly every one to two hours through the day, with the crossing taking about twenty minutes. There are no cars on the island. The Maison des Esclaves charges a small entry fee and is open most days, closed Mondays. Visitors should plan two to three hours on foot to see the slave house, the women's museum, and the old fort. The light is strongest in the late afternoon.