Egmont Key lighthouse
— the last white tower before the Gulf.
Not only on a wall.
Egmont 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.
“Egmont Key sits in the channel where Tampa Bay opens to the Gulf, a low island of sand and sea-grape with a working lighthouse on its north end. The tower has stood since 1858, rebuilt low and squat after a hurricane took the first one. The ferry runs from Fort De Soto. Brick foundations of Fort Dade still pattern the dunes. Gopher tortoises hold the high ground. Nothing else stands taller than the light. from the studio
The place, in three passes.
Egmont Key is a barrier island at the mouth of Tampa Bay, about three miles offshore from Fort De Soto Park in Pinellas County. The whole island is protected as a Florida State Park and a National Wildlife Refuge, with no bridge and no overnight stay. The lighthouse stands at the north end, in continuous service since 1858 after the original 1848 tower was destroyed by a hurricane. Fort Dade, a Spanish-American War coastal battery, was built across the island in 1898 and abandoned in 1923; brick streets and gun mounts still surface in the sand. Reaching the key takes a ferry, a charter boat, or a paddle across the channel.
The current lighthouse is the second on the island, a square brick tower eighty-seven feet tall, finished in 1858 after the first wooden light was lost to the 1848 hurricane. Its low profile is deliberate; the keepers learned the lesson. The lantern room held a third-order Fresnel lens for more than a century before automation, and the structure has stayed in active service under the United States Coast Guard. The ruins of Fort Dade's gun batteries, poured concrete in the same period as the Endicott coastal program, sit scattered across the south half of the key, half-eaten by tide and tortoise burrow.
Egmont Key is reachable only by boat. The Hubbard's Marina ferry runs from Fort De Soto Park on Mullet Key, a roughly forty-minute crossing each way, and private charters and kayaks make the trip in good weather. There is no concession, no fresh water, no shade past the tree line on the lighthouse path. The park is day-use only and closes at sunset. The island also holds nesting gopher tortoises and box-turtle colonies, so the interior trails are routed away from burrows. Bring water, a hat, and reef-safe sun cover. The light reads best with the morning ferry, before haze builds on the Gulf.
