Hondarribia colored harbor houses
— the row that paints itself before the boats come in.
Not only on a wall.
Hondarribia colored harbor houses, 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.
“A fishing town at the mouth of the Bidasoa, where the houses along the Marina quarter wear ox-blood reds, sea greens, and cobalt blues across their wooden balconies. The colour was practical first — boats returning at dusk needed to find their own door — and the town kept the habit long after the lamps came on. The old walled quarter sits above on the hill; the colour lives down by the water, where the txangurro pots steam and the kids run home along the quay. from the studio
The place, in three passes.
Hondarribia sits at the mouth of the Bidasoa river in Gipuzkoa, directly across the estuary from Hendaye in France. The town is built on two levels: a fortified medieval upper town behind 15th-century walls, and the lower Marina (La Marina) fishermen's quarter along the harbour. Population is around 17,000. The colored row of wooden balconies stretches along Calle San Pedro and the quayside, the houses traditionally painted in the colours of the fishing family that lived inside. The town's Spanish-French border crossing has shaped its trade for centuries.
The palette of the Marina quarter is unusually saturated for a northern Spanish town: deep oxblood, bottle green, indigo, mustard, and a particular Basque red called arrantzale gorria, the fisherman's red. The colours run across the wooden balconies and shutters rather than the stone walls, so the houses read as banded from the quay. The convention came from the practical need for a returning crew to spot their own front door from the water, and it survives as one of the most photographed streetscapes on the Bay of Biscay.
Hondarribia is reached by road from San Sebastián, about 20 km west, or by passenger ferry from Hendaye across the Bidasoa estuary. The Marina quarter is car-free and walkable end-to-end in twenty minutes. The town's two big calendar dates are the Alarde on September 8th, commemorating the lifting of the 1638 French siege, and the summer pintxo evenings along Calle San Pedro. The upper walled town holds the Parador, a converted castle of Charles V. The light along the harbour is best in the hour before sunset.
