Point Lobos
— — the cypress that grows only here.
Not only on a wall.
“A peninsula of cypress, granite, and small coves about three miles south of Carmel-by-the-Sea. Most of the Monterey cypress in the world grows in two places; this is one of them. Edward Weston photographed the trees and rocks here through the 1930s. Ansel Adams worked the same coves. Robert Louis Stevenson walked the coast here in 1879, and Point Lobos is among the places sometimes named as a visual model for Treasure Island. The reserve is 554 acres on land and about 750 acres underwater. There are days the wind takes the trees almost flat and days the water inside Whalers Cove is glass.
Point Lobos, 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.
Point Lobos is a small headland on the central California coast, about three miles south of Carmel-by-the-Sea in Monterey County. The reserve covers roughly 554 acres of headland and about 750 acres of underwater state marine reserve, established in stages beginning in 1933. The name comes from the Spanish Punta de los Lobos Marinos, Point of the Sea Wolves, after the California sea lions that haul out on the offshore rocks. The reserve adjoins the southern end of Carmel Bay and sits within the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. It is administered by California State Parks.
The peninsula carries one of two wild stands of Monterey cypress, Hesperocyparis macrocarpa, in the world; the other survives at Cypress Point a few miles north. The species evolved to root in shallow soil over decomposed granite and to hold itself sideways in the wind off the open Pacific. The constant onshore air shapes the canopy into the bent, low-spreading forms that Edward Weston spent the 1930s photographing in this same forest. The Cypress Grove Trail wraps the most exposed point of the reserve, where the trees lean farthest. Monterey cypress is listed by the California Native Plant Society as a rare native conifer.
The reserve is open daily from 8 a.m. to about half an hour after sunset. A day-use parking fee applies; arriving before nine on weekends, or after three, moves around the heaviest traffic, and the small parking lots inside the gate often close to new entries by mid-morning. The Cypress Grove Trail, Sea Lion Point, and Whalers Cove are the most walked corners. Sea otters, harbor seals, and California sea lions are common in the protected coves, and gray whales pass offshore from December through May. Dogs are not permitted on any trail.