Honomanu Bay Maui Ceramic Art Tile
— where the rainforest spills into the Pacific.
Not only on a wall.
“A dark cove at the base of one of the largest valleys on Haleakalā's windward flank. Honomanu Stream cuts down through the rainforest and meets the Pacific at a beach of black sand and rolling cobble. The Hana Highway switchbacks down to a one-lane bridge across the stream and climbs out again; most cars pull off at the overlook above to look down. The road to the beach itself is narrow, often rough, mostly used by surfers and families who live along the coast. The boulders shift with each swell. The basalt below is over a million years old, the oldest exposed on East Maui.
Honomanu Bay Maui 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.
Honomanu Bay sits on the windward coast of East Maui, between mile markers 13 and 14 of the Hana Highway, at the base of one of the largest valleys on Haleakalā's northern slope. Honomanu Stream drains the upper rainforest of the volcano and reaches the Pacific here as a black-sand and cobble beach. The bay sits between the Garden of Eden Arboretum to the west and the Keʻanae Peninsula to the east, the ancient Hawaiian taro-growing settlement that juts into the surf about a mile north. Access from the highway is via a narrow, unmarked makai turnoff that drops through forest to a parking area at the stream mouth.
The dark cobble at the waterline is Honomanu Basalt, the formal geologic name for the oldest exposed lava on East Maui. The flows came out of Haleakalā between 1.1 and 0.97 million years ago, light-grey to dark-blue aa and pahoehoe with olivine and feldspar phenocrysts, mixed with tuff and breccia near the contact zones. The formation takes its name from this valley; type-locality outcrops were first described along Honomanu Stream and the lower bay. The boulders on the beach have been worked smooth by the swell that crosses the open Pacific without a reef to break it. The colour shifts with the wet: slate when dry, near-black when the tide is in.
The drive from Kahului on the Hana Highway to Honomanu takes most visitors over an hour because of the corners, though the distance is only around 27 miles. The overlook above the bay is where most tour vans stop for a photograph; the turnoff down to the beach itself is unmarked, on the ocean side of the road just before the one-lane bridge across Honomanu Stream. The unpaved road down is rough enough that some rental contracts ask drivers to avoid it. Surfers come for a right-hand break that rises on the south side of the bay. Swimming is best in the freshwater pool that forms where the stream meets the ocean; the open surf is rarely calm.