Painted Church Big Island Ceramic Art Tile
— the cathedral painted into a small wooden room.
Not only on a wall.
“A small white wooden church with a red roof, above Honaunau Bay on the Kona coast. From the outside it reads like any nineteenth-century country chapel: a single belltower, palms close to the walls. Inside, a Belgian priest named John Berchmans Velghe spent five years at the turn of the last century painting the ceiling with stars and the walls with biblical scenes, and behind the altar he painted the interior of the Cathedral of Burgos so the parish would have a cathedral too. He left for his health before he finished. The work stayed.
Painted Church Big Island 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.
St. Benedict Roman Catholic Church sits on the slopes of Mauna Loa above Honaunau Bay, in the Kona district on the west side of Hawai'i Island. The site is roughly twenty-two miles south of Kailua-Kona along Highway 11, then up Painted Church Road from Highway 160. The current building was raised in 1899 after the original Kealakekua chapel was moved up the hill; it remains a working parish and the oldest Catholic church on the Island of Hawai'i [1]. The grounds look down through coffee land toward Pu'uhonua o Honaunau, the Place of Refuge, less than two miles below [2]. The church was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1977 [3].
The interior is what gives the building its common name. Between 1899 and 1904 a Belgian priest, Father John Berchmans Velghe of the Sacred Hearts Congregation, painted the ceiling as a night sky and the walls with biblical scenes meant to teach a parish that mostly could not read English [1]. Behind the altar he painted the chancel and ribbed vaulting of the Cathedral of Burgos in northern Spain, working in trompe-l'oeil so that the small wooden room appears to open onto a Gothic apse [2]. Velghe contracted tuberculosis and was sent home before the work was finished; the unpainted panels above the entry are still bare [1]. The Gothic Revival exterior is white-painted wood with a red roof and a single belltower [3].
The church is open during daylight hours and remains an active parish; Sunday Mass is celebrated in the painted nave [1]. There is no admission fee. A donation box near the door supports ongoing conservation of the painted interior. The site is reached by car only, about forty minutes south of Kailua-Kona along Highway 11, then a short climb up Painted Church Road from Highway 160. Photography without flash is generally permitted; the interior light is low. Pair the visit with Pu'uhonua o Honaunau National Historical Park, less than two miles down the hill [2].