Lake Superior Maritime Museum
— the room where the lakers come and go.
Not only on a wall.
Lake Superior Maritime Museum, 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.
“Tucked beside the Aerial Lift Bridge at the entrance to the Duluth shipping canal, the Lake Superior Maritime Visitor Center is the closest you can stand to a 1,000-foot laker without being on one. The Army Corps of Engineers runs it. Admission is free. The boat schedule is on a chalkboard inside. — from the studio
The place, in three passes.
The Lake Superior Maritime Visitor Center sits in Duluth's Canal Park, immediately south of the Aerial Lift Bridge and the Duluth Ship Canal. It is operated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Detroit District, and admission is free. The center opened in 1973 and underwent a major expansion in 1996. Exhibits cover the working Port of Duluth-Superior — the largest tonnage port on the Great Lakes — and the history of Lake Superior shipping, from canoes through the modern 1,000-foot ore boats that pass the canal under the lifted bridge.
The center is open daily, generally from 10 a.m., with seasonal extended hours through the shipping season from late March to mid-January. A chalkboard inside posts the day's expected vessel arrivals and departures through the canal. The Aerial Lift Bridge lifts to roughly 135 feet of clearance for each passing ship, with a horn signal exchange between bridge and vessel that can be heard across Canal Park. The Visit Duluth Boatwatcher's Hotline and the Duluth Shipping News board outside the building update the schedule in near real time.
The exhibit halls hold full-size cabin recreations from a wooden-era laker and a modern 1,000-footer, the original pilothouse from the steamer William A. Irvin's predecessors, ship models, and a working triple-expansion steam engine cutaway. Outside, the SS William A. Irvin — the former Pickands Mather & Co. flagship, launched in 1938 and 610 feet long — is moored in the adjacent slip as a separate seasonal museum ship. The Aerial Lift Bridge itself, built in 1905 and converted to a vertical lift in 1929-1930, sits 100 feet beyond the center's doors.
