Tiree
— — a flat green island leaning into the Atlantic.
Not only on a wall.
“A low, treeless island in the Inner Hebrides, west of Mull and lit by some of the longest sunshine hours recorded in Britain. The machair grasslands turn pale gold and wildflower-pink through summer. Wind comes off the Atlantic without a windbreak, which is why the international wave-sailing fleet has met here each October since 1986.
Tiree, 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.
Tiree is the westernmost of the Inner Hebrides, lying off Scotland's west coast roughly fifty kilometres west of Mull. The island is only twelve kilometres long and barely rises above thirty metres for most of its length, with the high point at Ben Hynish reaching one hundred and forty-one metres. The population sits around six hundred and fifty. Caledonian MacBrayne ferries reach the pier at Scarinish from Oban in roughly four hours; Hebridean Air flies from Glasgow. The Skerryvore lighthouse, on a shoal southwest of the island, was completed by Alan Stevenson in 1844.
Tiree records some of the highest sunshine totals in the United Kingdom. The Met Office station, run since 1926, regularly logs more than two hundred hours of bright sunshine in May, helped by the Atlantic clearing weather off the low ground rather than letting cloud pool against hills. There are almost no trees to break the light. Late summer evenings carry a long northern dusk that holds over the machair and the white shell-sand beaches at Balephuil and Gott Bay long after the mainland has gone dark.
The wind is the island's other constant. The Tiree Wave Classic has run each October since 1986, drawing the international windsurfing fleet to the bays at Balevullin and Crossapol where the Atlantic swell folds onto a shallow shelf. Outside the event, the same wind keeps the machair grazed short and the croft houses low to the ground, often with thick walls and a single chimney. Met Office records show mean wind speeds at the island station among the highest of any long-running UK station.