Lake Vermilion
— the long water, broken into islands.
Not only on a wall.
Lake Vermilion, 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 forty-thousand-acre lake at the southern edge of the canoe country, with a shoreline so cut and folded that the map looks more like lace than water. Three hundred and sixty-five islands, by the old Ojibwe count. The name is a translation of Onamuni, the lake of the sunset glow, for the red the sky throws across it on a clear evening. North woods on every shore. Loons at night. Nobody hurries here. from the studio
The place, in three passes.
Lake Vermilion stretches roughly forty miles across the northeast corner of Minnesota, in St. Louis County, immediately south of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. The lake covers about 40,000 surface acres and holds 365 islands by traditional count, a shoreline so braided it measures nearly 290 miles. The towns of Tower, Cook, and Soudan sit on the south shore. Minnesota added the Lake Vermilion unit to the adjacent Soudan Underground Mine State Park in 2010, creating one of the state's largest park complexes.
The lake drains east through the Vermilion River into Crane Lake and on into the Rainy River watershed, which empties into Hudson Bay. The water runs clear and cold across the rocky islands, tea-stained in the bog bays. Walleye, smallmouth bass, northern pike, and muskellunge all hold here; the Minnesota DNR has tracked Vermilion as one of the top walleye fisheries in the state for decades. Stony Point and Big Bay are the names anglers know. The far Wakemup arm is where the lake feels most like wilderness.
Vermilion is large enough to lose the engine sound on a calm morning. The shoreline is mostly Superior National Forest and private cabin lots reached only by boat. The Bois Forte Band of Chippewa holds reservation land on the north shore at Nett Lake and Vermilion; the name Onamuni-zaaga'igan is the Ojibwe original, recorded on old French and English maps as Vermilion for the sunset color. Loons nest on the smaller islands. After Labor Day the lake empties out and the water goes glass for weeks.
