Three Sisters Springs manatees
— the warm pool the river runs to in winter.
Not only on a wall.
Three Sisters Springs manatees, 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.
“Three connected spring pools off Kings Bay in Crystal River, fed from the Floridan Aquifer at a steady 72 degrees. From November into March, several hundred Florida manatees move in from the colder Gulf to wait out the cold. The water reads that pale, lit blue the springs always do, with grey shapes drifting under the surface, slow as weather.
The place, in three passes.
Three Sisters Springs is a cluster of three connected first-magnitude spring vents inside Crystal River National Wildlife Refuge in Citrus County, on Florida's Nature Coast. The springs feed into Kings Bay, which is the headwater of the Crystal River, about 75 miles north of Tampa. The refuge was established in 1983 specifically to protect the West Indian manatee. The city of Crystal River bought the spring property in 2010 with a Florida Communities Trust grant.
The springs hold close to 72 degrees Fahrenheit year-round because they discharge from the Floridan Aquifer, one of the largest freshwater aquifers in the world. That steady temperature is what makes the site survival-critical for manatees: gulf water below 68 degrees can cause cold stress and death. The water itself reads as a luminous pale blue from the depth of the spring vents and the limestone bottom, with very little tannin compared to the surrounding rivers.
Manatee season runs roughly from November 15 to March 31, when the refuge restricts the springs to passive-observation access and closes interior sanctuary zones to in-water activity. Daily counts in Kings Bay regularly pass 500 animals during cold snaps, and the bay is the only place in the United States where licensed in-water encounters with wild manatees are permitted, under refuge rules. The boardwalk view from the city-owned upland is open year-round.
