Lake Mille Lacs
— the lake the wind never quite leaves alone.
Not only on a wall.
Lake Mille Lacs, 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.
“The second-largest lake wholly in Minnesota, after Red. Mille Lacs sits shallow and wide in glacial flatland, the kind of water that holds the sky and gives the wind nothing to break against. Walleye boats in summer, dark houses in winter. The Ojibwe name it as the heart of their homeland. A working lake, not a postcard one. — from the studio
The place, in three passes.
Mille Lacs Lake covers about 132,000 acres in central Minnesota, the state's second-largest lake entirely within its borders. The shoreline runs roughly 76 miles around four counties — Mille Lacs, Aitkin, Crow Wing, and Kanabec — with the town of Garrison on the west shore and Isle on the south. The lake sits in a shallow glacial basin, averaging about 20 feet deep. Mille Lacs Kathio State Park, on its southwest corner, protects the outflow of the Rum River and one of the longest continuous archaeological records in the Upper Midwest.
Mille Lacs is famous walleye water, one of the most heavily managed fisheries in the state. The Minnesota DNR co-manages the lake with eight Ojibwe bands under a treaty arrangement that traces to 1837. Shallow, wind-stirred, and rocky-bottomed, the lake produces strong year classes when the spring weather cooperates. Smallmouth bass, northern pike, and tullibee share the water. Winter brings a temporary village of dark houses and rental shacks out from Garrison and Isle, sometimes more than 5,000 of them at the season's peak.
Open-water season runs from the May fishing opener through late October. Ice-in usually arrives in early December and the lake holds safe ice into March, though the wide, shallow basin can move late in the season. The Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe holds its annual powwow at the District I community in August, drawing dancers from across the Anishinaabe homeland. Walleye regulations are reset by the DNR each spring based on the prior year's harvest data, so anglers check the current rules before launching at Garrison or Wahkon.
