Saugatuck harbor
— the harbour the painters keep coming back for.
Not only on a wall.
Saugatuck harbor, 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 small Lake Michigan harbour at the mouth of the Kalamazoo River, two and a half hours west of Detroit. Schooner masts in the morning, sailboats in the afternoon, a hand-cranked chain ferry that has crossed the same hundred yards of water since 1838. The town has been an art colony since the Ox-Bow School opened in 1910, and the light coming off the dunes at Oval Beach still does what brought the painters here. from the studio
The place, in three passes.
Saugatuck sits at the mouth of the Kalamazoo River on Lake Michigan's eastern shore, in Allegan County, about 40 miles southwest of Grand Rapids. The town was platted in 1830 on the site of a former lumber port, and the working harbour still anchors the village today. The Saugatuck Chain Ferry, hand-cranked across the river since 1838, is one of the last of its kind in the country. Across the river, Mount Baldhead rises 282 feet above the harbour, and the trail down its far side opens onto Oval Beach.
The light is the reason painters came. In 1910 the School of the Art Institute of Chicago founded Ox-Bow on a meander of the Kalamazoo a mile north of town, drawn by the long west-facing afternoons over the lake and the way the dunes hold colour after the sun is off them. Ox-Bow still runs summer residencies on the same grounds. Late-day light moves across the marina, the white hulls, the dune grass on Mount Baldhead, and the open water beyond — a sequence that resets every evening from May through September.
The harbour is a summer place. The Chain Ferry runs Memorial Day through Labor Day, and the Star of Saugatuck paddle-wheeler sails the river the same months. Oval Beach is busiest in July and August, quietest after Labor Day when the water is still warm and the light has begun to lengthen. By late October the marina empties, the boats come out, and the town tightens to its winter shape. Spring returns slowly along the river; the first sailboats are usually back on their moorings by early May.
