Setúbal became more than a place to me. It became a presence.
Time spent along its harbor — among fishing boats, worn stone, salt air, and statues that seem almost awake — began to shape the way I saw light, texture, and human connection.
From that immersion grew a body of work: two books, ceramic tile coaster collections, and prints & painted murals. Each medium carries the same current — an exploration of how a working sea town, both gritty and luminous, transforms observation into feeling. What began as time spent in Setúbal became art shaped by it.
Watch two videos: Impressões and Setúbal: A Second Look.
- David Ehrlich
Salt & Stone: Setúbal
Tile Coaster Sets
Salt & Stone: Setúbal is a collection of ceramic tile coasters inspired by a harbor town where salt air, fishing boats, worn stone, and watchful statues share the same light.
Across five illustrated sets — Recognition, Among Us, Inner Tides, Salt & Sustenance, and Thresholds — the quiet currents of Setúbal emerge: moments of connection, community, imagination, work, and passage through a town shaped by sea and stone.
Printed as glossy ceramic tiles, each piece holds both beauty and edge — a reminder that here salt meets stone, statues begin to breathe, and the living currents of the town come to light.
View tiles in each set
Impressões de Setúbal
Impressões de Setúbal is not a travel book.
It is a meditation on how a place shifts from landscape to presence.
Arrival is rarely dramatic. Light gathers on water. Voices cross a square. A statue once passed without notice begins to feel familiar.
Nothing declares the change. It forms quietly — through return, through repetition, through staying.
Set between tide and street, sea and stone, the town holds its quiet tension.
What first feels scattered begins to cohere. Observation softens into recognition. Recognition settles into rhythm.
There is no dramatic turning point.
Only the moment when the camera lowers
and the square remains open.
The town endures.
Something in you has shifted. 88 pages, soft cover.
Read more about this book here.
Custom Art:
Prints and Murals
When Dolphins Rise
In Setúbal, Portugal — a harbor town shaped by salt, stone, and tidal light — two men move through the same streets, unaware that something has already begun.
Nothing announces itself. Not at first.
Like dolphins, what rises is brief — a glance held a moment too long, a breath shared in passing, a body turning closer.
The deeper motion remains unseen.
When Dolphins Rise is a study of recognition — of desire surfacing without spectacle, and of love that chooses, finally, to remain. 80 pages, soft cover.
Read more about this book here