Polihale Beach Kauai Ceramic Art Tile
— — where the road ends and the cliffs begin.
Not only on a wall.
“The last beach on the road, before the Nā Pali cliffs take over the coast. Seventeen miles of sand running south to the Mana Plain, four thousand feet of cliff rising at the north end. Niʻihau sits offshore in the haze. The dunes are tall here, some over a hundred feet, and the rough access road thins out the crowds. The sunsets do their work alone. The name belongs to a heiau at the north end of the beach, one of the leina where souls were said to leap from the island into the next world.
Polihale Beach Kauai 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.
Polihale State Park sits at the western terminus of Hawaiʻi Highway 50 on the island of Kauaʻi, the oldest of the main Hawaiian Islands. The beach runs roughly seventeen miles south through the Mana Plain toward Kekaha, forming one of the longest continuous stretches of sand in Hawaiʻi. At its northern end, the cliffs of the Nā Pali Coast rise as much as four thousand feet from sea level, beginning a roadless wilderness that extends north to Kēʻē Beach. The park itself covers roughly 138 acres of dunes and shoreline, and the closest land offshore is Niʻihau, about seventeen miles to the west across the Kaulakahi Channel.
Reaching the park means leaving the paved highway past Kekaha and following an unsealed cane-haul road for roughly five miles. The road is rutted and often soft, and rental-car contracts on Kauaʻi typically prohibit it, so most visitors arrive in four-wheel-drive vehicles. The Hawaiʻi Department of Land and Natural Resources operates the campground, which requires a permit obtained in advance. There are no lifeguards on the beach. The surf builds quickly in winter and rip currents can be strong even on calmer days, so swimming is generally limited to the gentlest summer afternoons. A small day-use area sits near the north end below the heiau.
The beach faces due west, which makes it one of the few places on Kauaʻi to watch the sun set directly over open water. In the last hour before sundown the long Nā Pali wall to the north turns the colour of warm copper, the deep red-gold of late island light. Niʻihau, the privately held island roughly seventeen miles offshore, becomes a black silhouette against the lit sea. After the sun is gone the dunes hold the warmth for a few more minutes while the sky goes through its long blue close. There is no light pollution to compete with the Milky Way once the dark settles in.