Indian River Lagoon dolphin
— a fin that breaks the surface and is gone.
Not only on a wall.
Indian River Lagoon dolphin, 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 156-mile estuary running from Ponce Inlet down past Jupiter, shallow enough to wade across in places. A resident bottlenose population of around a thousand lives the whole length of the lagoon, the same families staying in the same bends for years. People who keep a skiff on the water know the regular fins by sight.
The place, in three passes.
The Indian River Lagoon stretches 156 miles along Florida's central Atlantic coast, from Ponce de Leon Inlet in Volusia County south to Jupiter Inlet in Palm Beach County. The system links three named water bodies: Mosquito Lagoon to the north, the Banana River along the Cape Canaveral peninsula, and the Indian River itself. The National Estuary Program lists it among the most biodiverse estuaries in North America, with more than 4,300 species of plants and animals recorded. Average depth runs about four feet.
A year-round community of about 1,000 bottlenose dolphins lives in the lagoon, with families holding to specific stretches over decades. Research by the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute at Florida Atlantic University tracks individuals by dorsal-fin marks; some catalog entries go back to the 1980s. Manatees overwinter in the same brackish water, drawn by the warm-water discharges at the Florida Power and Light plants. Seagrass coverage has declined sharply since 2011, prompting state and federal restoration funding. Even at low tide, the channels stay open for a draft boat.
Mornings on the lagoon move quietly. Outboards stay throttled back in the manatee zones, and most of the working sound is the wind in the mangroves. The lagoon's three named islands and ten coastal towns sit set back behind the spoil banks, so the water itself reads emptier than the population on either shore suggests. Wading birds work the flats at first light: roseate spoonbills, reddish egrets, white pelicans in winter. A dorsal fin will surface a hundred yards out and the only sound is the small exhalation.
