Snake Island
— a flake of limestone the ancients called Leuke.
Not only on a wall.
“A limestone outcrop about thirty-five kilometers east of the Danube delta, roughly seventeen hectares in extent, and the easternmost dot of land along Ukraine's southwestern coast. In antiquity the Greeks knew it as Leuke and built a temple to Achilles here. In 2022 it became, for a few days, the small island the world was talking about.
Snake 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.
Snake Island, Ukrainian Zmiinyi Ostriv, sits in the northwestern Black Sea about thirty-five kilometers east of the Danube delta, and is administered as part of Kiliya Raion in Odesa Oblast. The island measures roughly 690 by 575 meters at its longest axes and rises to about forty meters above sea level. It is composed of Cretaceous limestone, sparsely vegetated, and has no natural fresh water. Population in peacetime has hovered between thirty and a hundred, mostly Ukrainian border guards, lighthouse keepers, and a small biological station.
In Greek antiquity the island was Leuke, the White Isle, and tradition held it as the resting place of Achilles after the Trojan War. Pindar, Pausanias, and Strabo all reference a temple here, and Hellenistic and Roman pilgrims left dedicatory inscriptions and bronze offerings. Foundations of the temple were excavated by Russian archaeologists in the nineteenth century, and Ukrainian and Romanian teams have since recovered black-figure pottery and weapon fragments. The lighthouse, raised in 1843 on the temple terrace, still marks the highest point on the island.
The island lies far enough offshore that on most days the only sounds are wind across the limestone and seabirds. The waters around Zmiinyi were named a Ramsar wetland of international importance in 1995, and the rocky shoreline is a breeding station for shags, gulls, and migrating passerines crossing the Black Sea. There are no trees of any size; vegetation is mostly low grasses and salt-tolerant shrubs. The closest mainland town is Vylkove, about forty kilometers west, accessible from the Danube delta by boat. Civilian visits are not currently permitted.