Star Island
— — a hotel on a rock, with the ocean in every window.
Not only on a wall.
“One of nine islands in the Isles of Shoals, off the New Hampshire coast. The white clapboard Oceanic Hotel has stood on the rock since 1873; a small stone chapel above it dates to 1800. The boat from Portsmouth runs from June into September. People come for a week of conference or a day of quiet, and mostly leave still talking about the light on the water.
Star 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.
Star Island is one of the Isles of Shoals, a small archipelago about 10 kilometres off the mouth of the Piscataqua River on the New Hampshire–Maine line. The island itself sits on the New Hampshire side, in the town of Rye, and covers roughly 47 acres. The wooden Oceanic Hotel, built in 1873, fills most of the visible profile from the sea. Since 1916 the island has been owned and run by the Star Island Corporation, which hosts Unitarian Universalist and United Church of Christ summer conferences and welcomes day visitors from late June through early September.
Nothing on the island runs after dark except a few lamps in the hotel and the rocking-chair porch facing the water. There are no cars, no televisions, and almost no cell coverage; mobile signal drops a mile out from Portsmouth and never quite returns. The Vaughn Memorial Chapel of 1800, on the rise above the hotel, holds a candlelight service every night of the conference season. Visitors carry their own lantern up the path. Most of what people remember from Star is what isn't there: noise, hurry, the next thing on the list.
Day-tripper service from Portsmouth runs on the M/V Thomas Laighton, operated by the Isles of Shoals Steamship Company, generally late June through early September. The crossing takes about an hour each way and includes roughly three hours ashore. Conference-week guests stay in the hotel itself; rooms are simple, walls are thin, and the porch is the social centre. The island has no public dock for private boats. Bring a wind layer even in August. The water around the Shoals stays cold enough that fog forms most summer mornings and burns off by mid-day.