Hanalei Bay Pier Kauai Ceramic Art Tile
— a wooden walk, the green wall behind.
Not only on a wall.
“Two miles of crescent beach on Kauai's north shore. At the eastern end a wooden pier walks out to a small covered pavilion. The mountains behind, Hihimanu and Nāmolokama, catch every cloud and run waterfalls down their faces most days of the year. In summer the bay lies flat enough to fish from the rail. In winter the same water becomes the north-shore swell the town is known for. The pier has stood in some form since 1892, the pavilion since 1921.
Hanalei Bay Pier Kauai Ceramic Art Tile, 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.
Hanalei Bay is a roughly two-mile crescent on the north shore of Kauai, the oldest of the main Hawaiian islands. The bay sits at the foot of the Halele'a Forest Reserve and the Nāmolokama range, which rises to about 4,000 feet within four miles of the shoreline. The Hanalei, Waipā, and Wai'oli rivers empty into the bay across the taro fields of Hanalei National Wildlife Refuge. The pier is at the eastern end, in the town of Hanalei, population about 450 at the last census. The original wooden T-pier was built in 1892 to load rice and cattle for inter-island steamers; the reinforced-concrete deck was added in 1921. The pier was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.
The bay's water has two seasons. From roughly April through October the trade winds and small swells leave the bay glassy, and the snorkelling near the pier sits over white sand at about ten feet. From October through April the north Pacific swells push directly into Hanalei and the same break delivers the surfable rights and lefts the town is known for. The Hanalei River discharge sometimes turns the inshore band brown after rain; the offshore band stays the green-blue of a young volcanic shelf. The Hanalei Volunteer Lifeguards staff the pier beach every day, with the tower at Black Pot Beach Park.
The pier is in Black Pot Beach Park, a Kauai County park with free parking that fills by mid-morning in summer. Walking the pier is open and unticketed; shoreline fishing is allowed without a license for non-commercial use. The Kuhio Highway runs north from Princeville and ends nine miles past Hanalei at Ke'e Beach, the trailhead for the Kalalau Trail in Nā Pali Coast State Wilderness Park. Heavy rain closes the road past Hanalei on short notice; the National Weather Service in Honolulu posts flood watches for the Hanalei River when forecast totals exceed two inches. Sunset is the photographed hour, looking west across the bay. Makana, the peak the 1958 film South Pacific called Bali Hai, sits further along the same shore.