Robben Island
— — the flat island where the silence carries.
Not only on a wall.
“A low island in Table Bay, about seven kilometres west of Cape Town. For most of the twentieth century, the country's political prisoners were held here, Nelson Mandela among them for eighteen years. The ferry from the V&A Waterfront still runs, and the guides on the island are men who were once locked inside it.
Robben 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.
Robben Island sits in Table Bay, roughly seven kilometres off Cape Town's coast. The island is small, about 5 square kilometres, and almost flat — the highest point barely rises above the surrounding sea. It has served, in turn, as a leper colony, a military post, and a maximum-security prison. UNESCO inscribed it on the World Heritage List in 1999, two years after the prison closed. The Robben Island Museum now operates the site, with ferries running from the Nelson Mandela Gateway at the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town.
The island is built of Malmesbury slate and Precambrian shale, with a vein of limestone running through the middle. The lime quarry, worked by prisoners including Nelson Mandela between 1965 and 1982, is the most visited spot on the tour. The white glare off the rock damaged Mandela's eyes; he asked, after his release in 1990, that photographers not use flash. A small cairn of stones at the quarry edge was built by former prisoners returning in 1995 for the first reunion since their release.
Ferries leave the Nelson Mandela Gateway at the V&A Waterfront several times a day, weather permitting; the crossing takes about thirty minutes. The standard tour runs three and a half hours and includes the prison block, Mandela's cell in Section B, and the lime quarry. Guides inside the prison are former political prisoners themselves. Booking ahead is essential, particularly in the southern-hemisphere summer between November and February. The island closes to visitors when the southeaster blows hard enough to suspend the ferry crossing.