Ship Island Fort Massachusetts
— brick the salt has been working on since 1866.
Not only on a wall.
Ship Island Fort Massachusetts, 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 masonry fort on a low barrier island, reached by ferry out of Gulfport across the Mississippi Sound. The walls are red brick laid for the Third System, finished after the Civil War on a sandbar that keeps moving. Pelicans loaf on the parade ground. The wind off the Gulf carries the smell of salt and pine tar, and the bricks are slowly going to powder where the spray hits them. — from the studio
The place, in three passes.
Fort Massachusetts sits on the western end of West Ship Island, part of Gulf Islands National Seashore, about twelve miles south of Gulfport, Mississippi, across the Mississippi Sound. Construction began in 1859 under the U.S. Army's Third System of coastal fortifications and finished in 1866. The fort is a low, D-shaped brick work, never formally named on government plans; the Massachusetts name comes from the Union frigate USS Massachusetts, which traded fire with Confederate batteries here in July 1861. The island is reached by a seasonal passenger ferry from Gulfport Harbor.
The fort is built of red brick over a sand-and-shell foundation, faced with granite at the sally port and gun embrasures. Roughly six million bricks were barged in from the mainland during construction. The salt air and Gulf storms have been steady work on the walls; the National Park Service has stabilised them several times, most visibly after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 cut West Ship Island in half. The brick on the seaward face is softer and pinker than the brick on the lee side, where the wind has done less.
Access is by the Ship Island Excursions ferry from Gulfport Harbor, running March through October, with a crossing of about an hour each way. Rangers lead short tours of the fort's interior, including the powder magazine and the casemates. There is no lodging on the island; visitors carry in water and carry out trash. The beach on the Gulf side is white quartz sand washed down from the Appalachians. Boots are fine; the parade ground is sand and crushed shell, and the casemates stay cool even in August.
