Cape Finisterre Atlantic cliffs
— the end the Romans gave a name.
Not only on a wall.
Cape Finisterre Atlantic cliffs, 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 Romans called it Finis Terrae, the end of the earth, because in their map it was. The cape sits on the Costa da Morte, the coast of death, a stretch of Galicia named for the ships the Atlantic took. The lighthouse at the tip has stood since 1853, on a granite headland that drops about 140 metres to the sea. Pilgrims still walk three days past Santiago de Compostela to reach it, burn a shirt or a pair of boots in the old custom, and watch the sun go down on water that has nothing behind it.
The place, in three passes.
Cape Finisterre — Cabo Fisterra in Galician — is a rocky headland on Spain's Atlantic coast in the province of A Coruña, Galicia. The Romans named it Finis Terrae, believing it the western edge of the known world, and the name held. The cape sits at the southern end of the Costa da Morte, a coastline named for the centuries of shipwrecks along its granite cliffs. The lighthouse at the tip, Faro de Fisterra, was designed by Félix Uhagón and first lit in 1853; it stands 17 metres tall on a headland roughly 140 metres above the sea, and is still in service.
The Atlantic at Fisterra has no continental shelf to soften it. Swells run unimpeded from somewhere off Newfoundland and break against bare granite. The Costa da Morte earned its name from wrecks like the HMS Captain in 1870, the HMS Serpent in 1890, and dozens of smaller losses logged through the nineteenth century. The cape also sits beside a productive percebes fishery — the gooseneck barnacles harvested by percebeiros who rope down the cliffs between sets of waves, one of the most dangerous trades on the Galician coast.
Fisterra is the unofficial end of the Camino de Santiago. Pilgrims who reach the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela often walk another 90 kilometres west to the cape, a route formalised as the Camiño de Fisterra. At the lighthouse a stone marker reads kilómetro 0,000. A traditional rite is the burning of a piece of clothing on the rocks below the lighthouse; local authorities now discourage open fires for fire-risk reasons. The cape is open year-round and free to walk; the small lighthouse-keeper's building houses a café and an exhibition.
