Voyageurs Kabetogama Lake
— twenty-five thousand acres of open water and held quiet.
Not only on a wall.
Voyageurs Kabetogama Lake, 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.
“Kabetogama is one of the four large lakes of Voyageurs, twenty-five thousand acres on the park's south side. The shoreline runs in granite and white pine, with hundreds of small islands and the Ellsworth Rock Gardens across the open water on the north shore. Houseboats anchor in the protected bays; the wind comes up most afternoons.
The place, in three passes.
Lake Kabetogama covers about 25,000 acres on the southern side of Voyageurs National Park in northern Minnesota, the second-largest of the park's four big lakes. The Kabetogama Peninsula separates it from Namakan Lake to the north; the two lakes flow together at Kettle Falls. The lake sits within the Canadian Shield, and its bays hold roughly two hundred small islands. The Kabetogama Lake Visitor Center, operated by the National Park Service, anchors the southwest end near the town of Kabetogama. Walleye, northern pike, and smallmouth bass are the working fish populations.
The water is dark and tannic, stained by the boreal soils that drain into it from the surrounding spruce and tamarack. The lake reaches a maximum depth of about eighty feet, with most of the southern bays running shallower than thirty. Wave fetch across the open middle stretches several miles, and the wind comes up most summer afternoons; small craft hold to the islands. Ice-out usually comes in late April or early May, and the lake freezes solid by mid-December, carrying snowmobile and ice-fishing traffic through to March.
The Kabetogama Lake Visitor Center is the main south-side entry to Voyageurs, with ranger programs, a boat ramp, and the seasonal Kab-Ash water-taxi dock. Boat-in campsites are scattered across the islands and along both shores; permits are issued through the park's reservation system. Houseboat rentals operate out of Ash River, Kabetogama, and Crane Lake. Ellsworth Rock Gardens lies across the open water on the north shore. Cell coverage is spotty across the lake, and the nearest gas and groceries are in Kabetogama or Orr.
