Lanai
— — the pineapple island, after the pineapples.
Not only on a wall.
“The smallest of the publicly accessible Hawaiian islands, and the quietest. There are no traffic lights. Lanai City sits at seventeen hundred feet on the central plateau, around a square of Cook pines planted a century ago. Hulopoe Bay is the only road-accessible beach on the south side. Sweetheart Rock stands offshore. The red volcanic formations of Keahiakawelo line the north plateau in a kind of slow drift.
Lanai, 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.
The place, in three passes.
Lanai is the sixth-largest Hawaiian island, about one hundred and forty square miles, lying ten kilometres off the lee coast of Maui across the Auau Channel. The population sits near three thousand two hundred, almost all of it in Lanai City on the central plateau at five hundred and twenty metres of elevation. James Dole bought the island in 1922 and planted it almost entirely in pineapple; commercial pineapple production ended in 1992. Larry Ellison purchased ninety-eight per cent of the island from Castle and Cooke in 2012.
The island has no traffic lights and one main paved road off the central grid. The Munro Trail follows the spine of Lanaihale, the highest point at one thousand twenty-six metres, through native cloud forest planted by ranch manager George Munro in the 1910s. From the summit, on a clear morning, five of the eight main Hawaiian islands are visible. Most visitors come over by ferry from Lahaina, about an hour across, and most stay one or two nights at one of two resorts.
Keahiakawelo, the Garden of the Gods, is a high plateau of red volcanic boulders worn by wind into a slow-drift sculpture field at the north end of the island. The site is reached only by four-wheel drive on the unpaved Polihua Road. Puu Pehe, Sweetheart Rock, stands eighty feet above the sea just off Manele Bay on the south coast, reached by a short cliff trail. The volcanic crater of Palawai, three miles across, sits at the centre of the old pineapple plantation.