Humpback Whale Maui Ceramic Art Tile
— the song you can hear through the hull.
Not only on a wall.
“Each winter, ten thousand humpbacks leave the cold feeding grounds off Alaska and travel three thousand miles to the warm channel between Maui and Lanaʻi. They come to calve, to nurse, to sing. The ʻAuʻau Channel is shallow and sheltered, a held space the whales have used for thousands of winters. The males sing for hours, a song you can hear through the hull of a small boat in Maʻalaea Bay. They do not eat the whole time they are here. They live on what they brought with them.
Humpback Whale 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.
Maui is the second largest of the Hawaiian Islands at 727 square miles, formed by two ancient shield volcanoes. Haleakalā in the east rises to 10,023 feet; the West Maui Mountains form the older dome to the west. The waters off Maui's southern and western shores fall within the Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary, designated by Congress in 1992 to protect about 1,400 square miles of federal ocean. The sanctuary's headquarters sit in Kihei, on Maui's south shore. The ʻAuʻau Channel between Maui and Lanaʻi, sheltered by both islands, is the most heavily used humpback breeding area in the North Pacific.
The ʻAuʻau Channel between Maui and Lanaʻi is shallow and sheltered, with surface water holding at 75 to 80 degrees Fahrenheit through winter. The warmth is critical for humpback calves, which are born without a thick blubber layer and could not survive in cold water. Trade winds break against the West Maui Mountains and Haleakalā, leaving the channel calm for months at a stretch. The same waters draw spinner dolphins, green sea turtles, and the occasional pilot whale. NOAA sanctuary rules require boats to keep 100 yards from any whale, and 300 yards from a mother and calf.
The humpbacks are present in Hawaiian waters from November through May, with the heaviest concentration between January and March. Roughly ten thousand whales arrive each winter from the Gulf of Alaska, a one-way journey of about 3,000 miles. They calve, mate, and rear their young in the warm channel, and they do not feed the entire time they are here, living off blubber laid down in the summer. Boat-based whale watching runs out of Lahaina, Maʻalaea, and Kihei; the peak month is February. Males sing the long, structured song the species is known for, and all males in a region sing the same song each season, which changes slightly the next year.