Willapa Bay oyster grounds
— — low tide and the bay turns to silver flats.
Not only on a wall.
“Willapa Bay is one of the cleanest large estuaries on the U.S. Pacific coast and one of its most productive oyster grounds. Pacific oysters were brought from Japan in the 1920s after the native Olympias collapsed; they now grow on tide flats off Nahcotta, Bay Center, and Oysterville. At low tide the bay drains to a fine grey sheen and the work begins. — from the studio.
Willapa Bay oyster grounds, 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.
Willapa Bay sits behind the Long Beach Peninsula in Pacific County, in the far southwest corner of Washington. It covers about 142 square miles at high tide and drains roughly half its area at low tide. The Willapa, Naselle, North, and Nemah rivers feed it. The bay produces about one in every six oysters eaten in the United States. The Willapa National Wildlife Refuge, established in 1937, protects long stretches of its shoreline and the old-growth grove on Long Island, the largest estuarine island on the U.S. Pacific coast.
The bay's productivity comes from how little large-volume fresh water reaches it and how completely it flushes on the tide. Average depth is about ten feet; the tidal range runs nine to twelve feet on a spring tide. Pacific oysters (Crassostrea gigas) were introduced from Japan in the 1920s after the native Olympia oyster fishery collapsed under late-19th-century San Francisco demand. Olympia oysters (Ostrea lurida) are being re-established in small restoration beds today, led by the Willapa Bay Restoration Partnership and the Nature Conservancy.
The oyster towns are reached by State Route 101 from Astoria or Aberdeen. Nahcotta has the Willapa Bay Interpretive Center on the old port dock; Oysterville, three miles north, is a National Register historic district laid out in 1854. Many growers sell direct from the dock during summer hours. Long Beach, the main lodging town on the peninsula, is a fifteen-minute drive west from Nahcotta. The Long Island grove inside the wildlife refuge is reached only by small boat across the channel from the refuge headquarters on U.S. 101.