Mission San Antonio de Padua
— the bells the oaks still keep.
Not only on a wall.
“Third in the chain of twenty-one. Founded by Junípero Serra in the Valle de los Robles on July 14, 1771 and now held inside Fort Hunter Liggett, an active Army garrison. Visitors check in at the gate before driving the last few miles through coast live oaks and dry grass to reach a long white facade with three arched bell openings cut into the brick. The Salinan whose land this was helped raise the walls. The place is still a working Franciscan parish, and the valley around it is mostly the valley it was.
Mission San Antonio de Padua, 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.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
The place, in three passes.
Mission San Antonio de Padua is the third of the twenty-one Spanish missions of Alta California, founded by Franciscan padre Junípero Serra on July 14, 1771 in what he called the Valle de los Robles. The site sits in southern Monterey County, roughly twenty miles southwest of King City, in the foothills of the Santa Lucia Range. The land was Salinan country before the mission was raised, and the church and its campanario now stand inside Fort Hunter Liggett, an active United States Army training base. Address: 1 Mission Road, Jolon. The valley is one of the only mission settings in California that the twentieth century did not develop around.
The white facade rising over the quadrangle is the campanario, a long brick belfry with three round-arched openings cut into the upper wall, above a single arched entry. The current church was built 1810 to 1813, then rebuilt after the 1906 earthquake brought much of it down. The walls are local adobe; the bell arches and door trim are baked brick. The Hearst Foundation funded a careful restoration through the 1940s and 1950s that returned the church and the quadrangle to working order. Three bells still hang in the campanario. The result is one of the most architecturally legible missions along the California chain.
Access is unusual for a California mission. Mission San Antonio sits inside Fort Hunter Liggett, an active U.S. Army training installation, so visitors stop at the main gate off Jolon Road and present a driver's license and vehicle registration before continuing the four miles to the mission. The grounds are usually open daily, with hours roughly 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. There is no admission fee; the parish takes donations and runs a small gift shop. The drive in passes the Hacienda, William Randolph Hearst's old ranch lodge designed by Julia Morgan, now a small inn run by the Army. The church itself is still a working Franciscan parish, with Sunday Mass held in the historic sanctuary.