North Dumpling Island
— — the smallest country with its own lighthouse.
Not only on a wall.
“A two-acre granite island in Fishers Island Sound, between Connecticut and Long Island, with a stone lighthouse from 1849 and a Stonehenge replica its owner built for company. Dean Kamen bought it in 1986 and declared it a sovereign micronation called the Kingdom of North Dumpling, with its own flag, anthem, and one-citizen constitution. The lighthouse still runs on solar and wind. The mainland sees it as a dot.
North Dumpling Island, 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.
North Dumpling Island lies in Fishers Island Sound, about a mile west of Fishers Island, New York, and roughly three miles south of Groton, Connecticut. It covers two acres of granite and grass. The present stone lighthouse was completed in 1849 and decommissioned as an active aid to navigation in 1959. The inventor Dean Kamen, creator of the Segway and the AutoSyringe insulin pump, purchased the island in 1986 and operates it off-grid with a wind turbine and a solar array. The waters around it are part of Long Island Sound.
The lighthouse is a square granite tower attached to a small keeper's cottage, both built from local stone in 1849. On the island's western lawn, Dean Kamen installed a half-scale replica of Stonehenge, with five trilithons of dressed granite, as a personal nod to the larger ring on Salisbury Plain. A modern wind turbine rises beside it, and a small solar field powers the lighthouse, the cottage, and the household. The island generates no waste it does not handle on-site, a working demonstration of the self-sufficiency Kamen designs around.
The island is private and closed to the public; the closest approach is by boat along the Fishers Island ferry route from New London, Connecticut, which passes within view. Sailors out of Mystic and Stonington see it on the southern horizon. The waters around the island are part of the Long Island Sound estuary, designated by the EPA as one of 28 estuaries of national significance. Charts mark North Dumpling Light, which still flashes white on its solar circuit through the night as a private aid.