Ginnie Springs cave diver
— water so clear the diver casts a shadow on the limestone floor.
Not only on a wall.
Ginnie Springs cave diver, 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 first-magnitude spring on the Santa Fe River in north-central Florida, sixty-five feet across and the colour of cold glass. The main spring is shallow and open enough that snorkellers float above it on summer weekends, but the real story is beneath the basin. The Ginnie cavern drops to about a hundred feet and connects to a much larger flooded system that has trained generations of American cave divers. Jacques Cousteau called the water visually perfect. He was not exaggerating. — from the studio
The place, in three passes.
Ginnie Springs is a privately owned 200-acre recreation area on the Santa Fe River, about 6 miles west of High Springs in Gilchrist County, Florida. The property holds seven named springs, including the main Ginnie, Devil's Eye, Devil's Ear and Twin Springs. Ginnie itself is a first-magnitude spring, discharging more than 65 million gallons of water a day at a constant 72°F from the Floridan aquifer. The water is famously clear; in a 1970s visit Jacques Cousteau described the visibility as visually perfect. The property has been open to the public since the early 1970s.
The basin reads as turquoise because the Floridan aquifer water that fills it is almost particle-free; sunlight scatters off the white limestone floor and back through about 20 feet of column. Discharge averages above 65 million gallons a day at 72°F year-round. Beneath the basin a swim-through cavern with a grated ceiling, the Ginnie Ballroom, opens at about 50 feet. Through the Devil's Eye and Devil's Ear entrances, certified cave divers reach the much larger Devil's System, mapped to more than 30,000 feet of penetrable cave passage and used as a training ground by the National Speleological Society's Cave Diving Section.
Ginnie Springs Outdoors operates the property as a private campground and dive park at 7300 NE Ginnie Springs Road, near High Springs. Day-use admission is charged per person, with tube rentals and on-site air and nitrox fills for divers. The main basin and Twin Springs are open to all swimmers and snorkellers; the Ginnie cavern is open-water with a guide line, and Devil's Eye and Devil's Ear are restricted to certified cave divers. Summer weekends are busy with river tubers floating the Santa Fe. Spring weekdays are the quiet window.
