Ko Olina Lagoons Oahu Ceramic Art Tile
— the ocean, kept calm in four crescents.
Not only on a wall.
“Four crescent lagoons cut into the lava of west Oahu, each one calm enough to cross in slow strokes. The leeward coast catches the trade winds late and softens them; the water reads turquoise over imported sand, then steps darker where the outer reef sits past the channel. A paved coastal path links all four lagoons over about a mile and a half. Hawaii law keeps every lagoon public, and each one has a small free parking lot at the entrance. People walk the path at dusk for the colour the west water holds when the sun goes.
Ko Olina Lagoons Oahu 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.
Ko Olina sits on the leeward coast of Oahu in the city of Kapolei, about seventeen miles west of downtown Honolulu and roughly an hour by car when the H-1 freeway is moving. The resort district occupies a stretch of dry coast that was cattle and sugar land before the 1980s; the four lagoons were excavated from the original lava shoreline as part of a master-planned resort development that opened in stages through the early 1990s. The shoreline today is shared by the Aulani Disney Resort & Spa, the Four Seasons Resort Oahu, and Marriott's Ko Olina Beach Club, with a paved coastal path linking all four lagoons.
Each lagoon is roughly crescent-shaped, opening to the Pacific through a narrow channel and ringed by a curved beach of sand imported during construction. The narrow opening breaks the incoming surf, so the inside of each lagoon stays nearly flat even when the offshore swell is up; the water sits around 75 to 80 degrees Fahrenheit through the year on the leeward side of the island. The turquoise reads the way it does because the bottoms are pale sand over shallow reef shelf, scattering the blue-green wavelengths back to the eye. The four lagoons carry Hawaiian names: Kohola (whale), Honu (green sea turtle), Nāia (dolphin), and Ulua (trevally jack).
Hawaii state law guarantees public access to every shoreline below the high-water mark, and Ko Olina's lagoons are no exception. Each lagoon has a small free public parking lot at its entrance, holding roughly two dozen cars; on weekends the lots fill by mid-morning. The lots are maintained by the resort and open at sunrise. A paved coastal path links the four lagoons over about a mile and a half, flat and stroller-friendly, with benches and shade trees set along the way. The leeward shore faces due west, so the lagoons take on their best colour in the last hour before sunset, when the trade winds usually drop.