Fire Island
— the sand the Atlantic keeps rearranging.
Not only on a wall.
“A thirty-two-mile barrier island between Great South Bay and the Atlantic, mostly without cars. Wooden walks instead of streets. The Sunken Forest grows below sea level behind a wall of dune. People walk to dinner barefoot, ferry tickets in a pocket. The light off the water in late August is the colour the painters keep coming back for.
Fire 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.
Fire Island is a barrier island roughly thirty-two miles long off the south shore of Long Island, separating Great South Bay from the Atlantic. Most of it lies inside the Fire Island National Seashore, designated by Congress in 1964. The seventeen residential communities along its length are largely car-free, reached by passenger ferries from Bay Shore, Sayville, and Patchogue. The Otis Pike Wilderness on the eastern end, set aside in 1980, is the only federally designated wilderness in New York State.
Two waters define the island. The Atlantic side carries open surf and a steady wind that builds and reshapes the dunes through every storm season. The bay side is quieter, shallow, warm by July, dotted with the wooden docks of Saltaire and Ocean Beach. Between them, the Sunken Forest at Sailors Haven holds a 300-year-old maritime holly grove that sits below sea level, sheltered from salt spray by the secondary dunes themselves. The water table here lies a few feet under the boardwalks.
There are no cars on most of Fire Island. Passenger ferries run from Bay Shore, Sayville, and Patchogue from May through October, with limited winter service. The Fire Island Lighthouse near Robert Moses State Park, lit in 1858 and standing 168 feet, is open for climbing in season. Bicycles, the small red wagons used for groceries, and the boardwalks between cottages are the local infrastructure. The Sunken Forest boardwalk is a flat half-mile loop from the Sailors Haven ferry dock.