Stearns Wharf
— where State Street ends and the channel begins.
Not only on a wall.
Stearns Wharf, 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 oldest continuously operating wooden wharf on the California coast, built by John Peck Stearns in 1872 at the foot of State Street in Santa Barbara. It runs roughly 2,300 feet out into the harbour, set on creosoted pilings that have been rebuilt more than once after fire and storm. Cars are still allowed on the deck, which is unusual for a working pier. At the far end the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History runs a small Sea Center over the water, and a row of restaurants and shops occupies the middle stretch. The light over the channel changes more times in a day than seems fair.
The place, in three passes.
Stearns Wharf sits at the southern end of State Street in Santa Barbara, California, jutting into the Santa Barbara Channel. The wharf is owned by the City of Santa Barbara and managed by its Waterfront Department, and is one of the few public piers in California that still permits car access along most of its deck. The deck runs about 2,300 feet from the shoreline to the seaward end. The channel itself separates the mainland from the Northern Channel Islands: Anacapa, Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, and San Miguel, all visible from the wharf on clear afternoons. Whale-watch and harbour-tour boats operate from the slips at the foot of the deck.
The wharf was completed in 1872 by John Peck Stearns, a Massachusetts-born lumberman, and served as the deep-water port for Santa Barbara and the coastal steamer trade for decades. It has burned and been rebuilt more than once, with the most serious fires in 1973 and 1998, each time replaced on its creosoted Douglas-fir pilings. James Cagney and his brothers William and Edward bought the wharf in 1944 and held it until it was returned to the City of Santa Barbara in 1983. It is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Pelicans still roost on the railings as they did in the old photographs from the 1890s, when the cargo was hides and lumber.
The wharf is open every day and free to walk. Cars may drive on and park along the deck for a small fee, which is rare among California public piers; the single lane is shared with foot traffic and speeds are kept low. Toward the seaward end is the Santa Barbara Sea Center, a small saltwater aquarium and touch-tank operated by the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History since 2005, with viewing windows that look directly down into the channel. Restaurants and shops sit along the middle stretch, several of which have operated as concerns for over a century. Sunset is the busiest hour, when the light catches the Santa Ynez foothills behind the city and the channel turns copper.
