Parker Ranch Big Island Ceramic Art Tile
— — the green Hawaii keeps for itself.
Not only on a wall.
“Rolling pasture in the saddle between Mauna Kea and the Kohala Mountains, on the Big Island. Hawaii's biggest working cattle ranch, and one of the oldest in the United States. Founded in 1847, decades before the Texas longhorn drives north. The cowboys here are paniolo. Vaqueros came across from Mexico in the 1830s to teach Hawaiians the trade, and the word for cowboy in Hawaiian is still español, slightly bent. The grass stays green most of the year. The mist sits low in the morning. Visitors who flew in for the Kona beaches usually don't drive up.
Parker Ranch 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.
Parker Ranch covers about 130,000 acres on the Big Island of Hawaii, in the saddle between Mauna Kea and the Kohala Mountains. It was formally established in 1847 by John Palmer Parker, a sailor from Newton, Massachusetts who had jumped ship in Hawaii and married Kipikane, a granddaughter of King Kamehameha I. The headquarters sit in the town of Waimea, also known as Kamuela on the post office, at about 2,670 feet of elevation. It is one of the largest cattle ranches in the United States and predates the founding of the King Ranch in Texas by six years. Today the land is held by the Parker Ranch Foundation Trust; the beneficiaries are Big Island schools, hospitals, and charitable institutions, a bequest left by the last family heir, Richard Smart, at his death in 1992.
Cattle came to Hawaii in 1793 as a gift to King Kamehameha I from British captain George Vancouver, who declared a ten-year kapu protecting them. By the 1830s the herds had gone feral and become a problem, so Kamehameha III brought Mexican vaqueros across the Pacific to teach Hawaiians the trade. Their word español, slightly bent in the local tongue, became paniolo, and paniolo is what Hawaiian cowboys have called themselves ever since. In 1908, three paniolo from Parker Ranch traveled to Cheyenne, Wyoming for the Frontier Days rodeo: Ikua Purdy, Eben "Rawhide Ben" Low, and Archie Ka'au'a. Ikua Purdy won the world steer-roping championship against the best of the American West and was later inducted into the National Cowboy Hall of Fame. The ranch still holds an annual Fourth of July rodeo at the Parker Ranch Arena, the oldest rodeo in Hawaii.
The climate on the high pasture stays cool and wet by Hawaiian standards. Waimea sits at roughly 2,670 feet of elevation, high enough to catch the trade-wind clouds as they spill west off Mauna Kea. The result is a mist that holds through the morning and a grass that stays green most of the year. The look sits closer to the Scottish Highlands than to the rest of the state. The town carries two names: Waimea on most signs, Kamuela on the post office. The post-office form is the Hawaiian rendering of Samuel, for Samuel Parker of the ranch's founding family. Daytime highs at the headquarters run in the low 70s most of the year, with frequent afternoon showers in the wetter eastern half of town. Visitors arriving for the Kona beaches a hundred miles south usually don't drive up. The ranchers here generally wear a jacket.