Lewis and Harris
— — the long Atlantic light on the machair.
Not only on a wall.
“The largest island of the Outer Hebrides, off Scotland's north-west coast, one landmass with two names. Lewis is peat and lochan country to the north; Harris turns mountainous to the south, with the white shell-sand beaches the island is known for. The Calanais stones have stood on the Lewis moor for about five thousand years. Harris Tweed is still woven on the island, by hand, in the crofters' own homes. from the studio
Lewis and Harris, 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.
Lewis and Harris are the two parts of a single island in the Outer Hebrides, roughly 60 kilometres off the north-west coast of mainland Scotland. The island covers about 2,180 square kilometres, with Lewis to the north and Harris to the south, separated by a narrow waist of land near the village of Tarbert. The main town, Stornoway, sits on the east coast of Lewis. Scottish Gaelic remains the everyday language for a substantial share of the population.
The Calanais Standing Stones, Tursachan Chalanais in Gaelic, sit on a low ridge above Loch Roag in the west of Lewis. The site dates to roughly 3000 BCE, predating Stonehenge's central trilithons by several centuries. Thirteen stones form a circle around a central monolith nearly five metres tall, with stone rows radiating in four directions. The stone is Lewisian gneiss, among the oldest exposed rock in Europe, dated to about three billion years.
The Atlantic light on the west coast is the photographer's reason for the trip. Luskentyre and Scarista on Harris hold long white beaches that read almost Caribbean under the right conditions, set against turquoise water that comes from the same shell sand. The latitude, about 58 degrees north, gives long northern summer evenings and short winter days, with the light moving fast across the machair grasslands behind the dunes and the cattle grazing them.