Marine on St Croix
— the village the river kept small.
Not only on a wall.
Marine on St Croix, 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.
“One of the oldest settlements in Minnesota, built around the sawmill that cut the first commercial log in the state in 1839. The village kept its scale. White clapboard, a general store with a screen door, a single lane down to the landing where the St. Croix moves slow and dark. The bluffs across the river belong to Wisconsin. In autumn the maples on both banks burn at once and the water carries the colour south.
The place, in three passes.
Marine on St. Croix sits on the Minnesota bank of the St. Croix River in Washington County, about 40 miles northeast of Minneapolis. The Marine Mill, built in 1839 by the Marine Lumber Company, cut the first commercial lumber in what would become Minnesota and is preserved today as a state historic site. The village's population is roughly 700. Much of the original Greek Revival and Italianate streetscape survives intact, and the wider Marine on St. Croix Historic District is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The St. Croix here is part of the St. Croix National Scenic Riverway, one of the original eight rivers protected under the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act of 1968. The channel runs deep and slow past the Marine landing, with sandstone bluffs rising on the Wisconsin shore. The river is the state line, and small boats, paddlers, and the seasonal Stillwater–Hudson traffic share the same braided current. Bald eagles winter along the open stretches below Taylors Falls, and the riverway's lower forty miles remain undammed.
The valley turns through a hard four-season cycle. Sugar maples and red oaks on both banks reach peak colour the first or second week of October, and the river carries leaves south past the village landing for days. Winter freezes the shallows; the deeper channel stays open and ice fishers work the back bays. Spring brings high water from snowmelt above Grantsburg, and the wild rice beds north of Stillwater come up green in late June. Summer is quiet weekday and busy weekend, the way river towns have always been.
