Mandraki harbor windmills
— three stone windmills, and the wind that still finds them.
Not only on a wall.
Mandraki harbor windmills, 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 three medieval windmills line the breakwater that closes the old harbour of Rhodes, the one the Knights of St. John used for their galleys. At the harbour mouth the two bronze deer mark where the Colossus is supposed to have stood. Fort St. Nicholas sits at the far end, low and square. The wind off the Aegean here is the same wind that ground the ships' grain six centuries ago.
The place, in three passes.
Mandraki is the northern of the three harbours of Rhodes town, on the island's northern tip in the South Aegean. The breakwater carries three round stone windmills and ends at the small Fort of St. Nicholas, built by the Knights Hospitaller in the 15th century. Two bronze deer at the harbour entrance, Elafos and Elafina, mark the traditional site of the Colossus of Rhodes, one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world. The medieval old town behind the harbour is a UNESCO World Heritage site, inscribed in 1988.
The windmills are squat cylinders of local stone, each capped with a conical wooden roof and a turning shaft. They were built during the long Knights-of-St-John period that began in 1309 and ended with the Ottoman siege of 1522, and they ground the grain that fed the harbour's galleys and the city behind the walls. There were once more than a dozen along the mole. Three are still standing, restored, and they hold the line of the breakwater the way they always have, the open Aegean on one side, the calm water on the other.
The breakwater is open and free, a flat walk of about 400 metres from the deer statues to Fort St. Nicholas at the tip. Late afternoon brings the warm light onto the stone and the cleaner air off the water. Rhodes town has its own airport, Diagoras, about 14 km southwest, and ferries from Piraeus dock in the larger commercial harbour just east of Mandraki. The medieval old town and the Palace of the Grand Master are a ten-minute walk inland through the Gate of Liberty.
