Waiopae Tide Pools Big Island Ceramic Art Tile

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 pools were on the easternmost point of Hawai'i Island, in the Puna District about thirty miles south of Hilo, along the Kapoho coast. The site sits at roughly 19.50°N, 154.83°W. As of June 2018 the location is buried under lava from the lower East Rift Zone of Kīlauea.

No. The pools were destroyed in early June 2018 when lava from the Kīlauea eruption ran over Vacationland and Kapoho and filled the bay past the outer reef. The shoreline is now a black-rock plain and the access road no longer reaches water.

It was a state-designated marine reserve established in 2003 under the Hawai'i Department of Land and Natural Resources. The district covered roughly thirty-six acres of basalt-rimmed shallows in Kapoho Bay, sheltering more than a hundred reef-fish species and over twenty species of stony coral.

On 3 May 2018, the lower East Rift Zone of Kīlauea opened fissures through the Leilani Estates subdivision four miles upslope. Over the next four months lava buried Vacationland, the Kapoho subdivision, and the tide pools, then continued into the sea. The eruption paused in early September 2018.

The district recorded more than a hundred reef-fish species, including yellow tangs, manini, saddle wrasses, parrotfish, and butterflyfish, along with the occasional small reef shark. Stony corals included cauliflower coral (Pocillopora meandrina) and rice coral (Montipora capitata).

Yes. The boundary remains on the state's books. The habitat inside it does not. The Hawai'i Department of Land and Natural Resources has not removed the designation, and the area continues to be referenced in USGS and university coral-recovery research.

It is pronounced approximately vai-OH-pai. In Hawaiian, wai means water and 'ōpae means shrimp, so the name reads loosely as water of the shrimp, after the small reef shrimp that lived in the inner pools.

It carries particular weight for anyone who knew Kapoho before 2018: friends from Puna, people who used to snorkel the pools, families who lost houses in the lower East Rift Zone flow. A Small or Medium with a note from the studio holds well as a piece of a place that no longer exists.

The deep blues and greens, warm corals, and stained-glass light pattern read well in Coastal-modern, Mid-century, and Tropical-modern interiors. The piece carries more weight against a warm-wood or matte-white wall than against another patterned surface.

Yes. Biophilic design favors organic palettes, water imagery, and pieces that connect a room to a specific natural place. The Wai'opae tile works the way a window does: a quiet anchor of warm water and reef light, with a particular story behind it.

A single Large reads well over a console; a 4-tile Mural is right above a standard sofa; a 9-tile Mural suits a larger room or a stairwell wall. We hand-finish each tile individually so a mural reads as a continuous painting.

Yes. Order Dura Satin or Matte for any vertical install in a wet area. Both are scratch-resistant and clean with water and a microfibre cloth. The Glossy finish is for framed wall art in dry rooms.

Microfibre cloth and water. No solvents, no abrasive cleaners. The colour is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, beneath a thin glossy finish, so the surface holds up to daily handling.

Yes. Every WenderVista piece is painted in-house by Reid Wender at our family studio in Knoxville, Tennessee. There is no licensing, no stock imagery, no third-party art. One curator, one studio, one atlas of places.