Pololu Black Sand Big Island Ceramic Art Tile
— — the black crescent where the road runs out.
Not only on a wall.
“The valley at the north end of the Kohala coast, where Highway 270 stops and the road ends. From the lookout the black-sand beach sits below, a long dark crescent at the foot of the cliffs. The sand is basalt the old Kohala volcano gave up over a long time. The trail down is short and steep; the surf is rough enough that swimming is not the point. Ironwood throws shade at the rim. Hawaiians farmed taro on the valley floor for centuries, until the last families moved out in the mid-1900s. The next valleys down the coast, Honokāne Nui and Honokāne Iki, are reachable on foot by people who know the way.
Pololu Black Sand 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.
Pololū Valley sits at the northern tip of the Kohala coast on Hawaiʻi Island, the northernmost of a series of deep amphitheater-headed valleys carved into the windward side of the Kohala Volcano. Akoni Pule Highway (Hawaiʻi Route 270) ends at the Pololū Lookout above the valley, about an hour's drive north of Waimea and roughly nine miles past the small town of Kapaʻau. The Kohala Volcano is the oldest of the five volcanoes that built the Big Island, last erupting about 120,000 years ago. The trail from the lookout to the valley floor descends roughly 400 feet over a little more than half a mile of switchbacks, ending at a black-sand beach backed by ironwood trees.
The sand at Pololū is black because the Kohala coast is built almost entirely from basalt. Lava flows from the Kohala Volcano produced dense iron- and magnesium-rich rock that, when broken down by surf and stream over many thousands of years, weathers to a deep charcoal grain instead of the pale quartz sand of continental beaches. The sea cliffs above the valley reach roughly 400 feet and continue as a sheer pali along the windward coast toward Waipiʻo Valley, the largest of the Kohala valleys to the south. Massive prehistoric landslides off the Kohala flank, recorded in seafloor surveys by the U.S. Geological Survey, scalloped the windward valleys into their amphitheater shape.
The hike from the Pololū Lookout to the beach is short and steep: roughly six-tenths of a mile each way with about 400 feet of descent over loose volcanic dirt and switchbacks. The State of Hawaiʻi has limited parking at the lookout and asks visitors to coordinate access through a community stewardship program that took effect in 2022, after years of erosion damage from heavy foot traffic. The surf is strong and the rip currents serious; swimming is not advised and lifeguards are not present. Onward routes into Honokāne Nui and the older Awini Trail cross private and conservation land and are not always open. The lookout itself is open to the public without a fee.