San Nicolas Island
— — the island the mainland forgot.
Not only on a wall.
“Sixty-some miles off the Southern California coast, past Catalina, past San Clemente. A windswept Navy-held island of dune grass and sandstone, low cliffs, fog that comes in from the west and sits. The Lone Woman of San Nicolas lived alone here for eighteen years in the early 1800s. The wind has not changed.
San Nicolas 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.
San Nicolas is the outermost of the eight Channel Islands of California, roughly 61 miles southwest of Point Mugu on the mainland. The island measures about 22 square miles and rises to roughly 910 feet at its highest point. It belongs to Ventura County administratively, but is owned and operated by the United States Navy as part of Naval Base Ventura County, used as a missile and radar test range since the 1950s. Public access is prohibited; the island is staffed by a small rotating Navy and contractor population.
The island is treeless and windward. Dune grass, lupine, and a few stands of low coreopsis hold the sandstone bluffs against an almost constant northwest wind. The Nicoleño people lived here for thousands of years before being removed in 1835. Juana Maria, the Lone Woman, remained alone on the island until 1853, the story later told in Scott O'Dell's Island of the Blue Dolphins. The Navy footprint is small and contained; most of the island is quiet ground, fog, and sea.
There is no visiting San Nicolas. The island is a closed military installation; civilian travel is not permitted by boat or air, and there is no public ferry or charter access. The four neighboring Channel Islands that can be visited are Anacapa, Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, and San Miguel, all part of Channel Islands National Park, reached by Island Packers ferry from Ventura Harbor. San Nicolas, San Clemente, and Santa Barbara remain under federal control and are seen mostly from passing ships and distant photography.