Anclote Key lighthouse
— a tall iron skeleton holding a light over the Gulf.
Not only on a wall.
Anclote Key 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.
“An iron skeletal lighthouse on the south end of Anclote Key, reachable only by boat. The tower has stood since 1887, marking the channel into the sponge docks at Tarpon Springs. It went dark in 1984 and was relit after a long restoration. The island around it is a state preserve. Most visitors arrive by ferry from the mainland, walk the beach, and watch the light from the sand. from the studio
The place, in three passes.
Anclote Key lies about three miles off the mouth of the Anclote River, west of Tarpon Springs in Pinellas County, Florida. The island is roughly four miles long and is the centrepiece of Anclote Key Preserve State Park, reachable only by private boat or by the seasonal ferry from the mainland. The lighthouse stands at the southern end of the island, a slender iron skeletal tower 101 feet tall, first lit in 1887 to guide vessels through the channel that fed the sponge fleet at Tarpon Springs. There is no road to it and no settlement on the key.
The tower is one of the surviving iron skeletal lighthouses of the Gulf coast, a design chosen because the open framework resists hurricanes better than a masonry shell and because the parts could be shipped from a foundry and bolted together on a remote site. The original fourth-order Fresnel lens was installed in 1887 and the keeper's quarters once stood on the same stretch of sand. The tower is painted brown and white. Storms have stripped the surrounding dune line back more than once, and the structure now stands closer to the shoreline than it did at the start.
The light was deactivated in 1984 and the structure deteriorated through the 1990s before a community-led restoration relit it in 2003. The state park manages the island as a primitive day-use site, with no fresh water, no concessions, and no shade beyond what the sea oats and a few cabbage palms give. Most visitors come on the seasonal ferry from Tarpon Springs or the Sponge Docks, anchor in the bay for the afternoon, and walk south along the beach to the tower. Camping is allowed on the north end by permit only.
