Bandon Beach sea stacks
— — the rocks the tide keeps walking past.
Not only on a wall.
“The sea stacks at Bandon stand in a long, broken line off the southern Oregon coast. Face Rock is the largest, with a profile turned to the sky. Wizard's Hat, the Cat and Kittens, the Sisters. At low tide the wet sand goes mirror-flat between them, and the stacks double in the reflection. from the studio
Bandon Beach sea stacks, 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.
Bandon sits on the southern Oregon coast at the mouth of the Coquille River, about ninety miles north of the California line. The town has a permanent population near three thousand and a four-mile run of basalt sea stacks just offshore. The stacks are part of the Oregon Islands National Wildlife Refuge, a chain of more than 1,800 rocks, reefs, and small islands that runs almost the entire Oregon coast. Most are closed to landing to protect nesting seabirds. The named stacks at Bandon — Face Rock, Wizard's Hat, the Cat and Kittens, the Sisters — anchor the view from Coquille Point.
The stacks are erosional remnants of resistant volcanic and sedimentary rock left standing as the softer coastline retreated. Face Rock is roughly a hundred and seven feet tall and reads, from the north, as a woman lying on her back looking up; a Coquille legend names her Ewauna. The cluster known as the Cat and Kittens lies just south. The shoreline between them is studded with tide pools — sea stars, anemones, hermit crabs — that open at minus tides. The stacks themselves are closed to landing; they belong to the seabirds that nest on them from spring through midsummer.
The two best vantages are Coquille Point and Face Rock State Scenic Viewpoint, both off Beach Loop Road on the south edge of town. Each has a paved overlook and stairs down to the sand. Walk the beach at low tide and the named stacks sit within a half-mile of the access; check a tide table before going. Sunset is the hour, and the haystacks throw long silhouettes onto the wet sand. Bandon's Old Town and the cranberry bogs east of Highway 101 round out a single day; the Coquille River Lighthouse, built in 1896, stands across the river mouth.