Cape Tainaron lighthouse
— the last light before the open sea.
Not only on a wall.
Cape Tainaron lighthouse, 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.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
“The lighthouse stands at the southernmost point of mainland Greece, on a stub of grey rock above the Ionian. It was lit in 1882 and is still tended by the Hellenic Navy. The road ends thirty minutes' walk short of it; the path passes a Roman floor mosaic on the way. Most days the only sound is wind.
The place, in three passes.
Cape Tainaron, called Cape Matapan on older British charts, is the southern tip of the Mani peninsula in Laconia, the southernmost point of mainland Greece. The cape closes the Messenian Gulf to the west and the Laconian Gulf to the east, and faces the open Ionian Sea. The site is administered as part of Mani Municipality and lies roughly forty kilometres south of Areopoli, the regional town. The land here is bare limestone, scoured by wind from three quarters, with no village or shelter beyond the road end.
The lighthouse was completed in 1882 by the Greek Lighthouse Service, a sixteen-metre white masonry tower set into the bare cape. The keeper's quarters alongside are no longer staffed; the light is automated and still maintained by the Hellenic Navy. The walk to it passes the floor mosaic of an early Christian basilica at Asomati and the foundations of a Roman-era sanctuary that absorbed an older Temple of Poseidon, recognised in antiquity as an asylum for sailors and runaway slaves. The stone is local pale limestone, weathered grey by sea wind.
The road south from Areopoli ends at the small bay of Kokkinogia. From there a marked footpath crosses about 1.5 kilometres of low rock to reach the lighthouse, taking around thirty minutes each way. There is no shop, no shade, and no signal on most carriers. Sheep tracks cross the path. In summer the bare stone holds heat hard into evening; in winter the wind off the Ionian is the loudest thing for kilometres around the cape. The sea cave called the gate of Hades opens on the western side below the path.
