Common loon on Squam Lake
— — the call that carries longer than the light.
Not only on a wall.
“Squam is the quiet lake. Winnipesaukee gets the speedboats; Squam keeps the loons. Mornings, the water holds the islands still, and somewhere out past Five Finger Point a tremolo runs the length of the cove and back. The Loon Preservation Committee in Moultonborough has counted these birds on the lake for over forty summers. The pair that nests on a given island returns to it, year after year, as if the place were owed to them. from the studio
Common loon on Squam Lake, 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.
Squam Lake sits in central New Hampshire, ringed by Holderness, Sandwich, Center Harbor, Moultonborough, and Ashland, and covers about 6,791 acres across two basins. Sixty-seven islands break the water. The lake stood in for Golden Pond in the 1981 film with Henry Fonda and Katharine Hepburn, which is why visitors still ask about the dock at Purgatory Cove. The Squam Lakes Association in Holderness maintains the public moorings and the conservation easements that keep the shoreline largely undeveloped.
What the lake is known for is not what you see, but what you hear. A common loon's wail can carry more than a mile across still water, and the tremolo (the trembling laugh) is given in alarm or when a second loon passes too near. The Loon Preservation Committee, founded in 1975 on Squam after a population collapse, now tracks roughly 300 territorial pairs across New Hampshire. A typical Squam pair raises one or two chicks a summer, riding for a week on the parent's back.
Loons arrive on Squam within days of ice-out, usually in late April, and leave by early November before the lake locks up again. Mid-June is incubation; chicks hatch around the first week of July. The clearest viewing window is the calm hour after sunrise, when the lake is glass and the call carries furthest. The Squam Lakes Natural Science Center in Holderness runs ranger-led pontoon tours from May into October, with a hard rule about keeping more than 150 feet off any rafting bird.