Arnold Heim – Küsnachter Horn Mug

Arnold Heim (1882–1965) was a Swiss geologist who inherited both the discipline and the passion for Alpine fieldwork from his father, Albert Heim — one of the founders of modern Alpine geology. Arnold studied at ETH Zurich and went on to make significant contributions to the understanding of tectonic structures in the Swiss Alps, later extending his research to geological surveys in China and to comparative studies of the Alps and the Himalayas. His family background was exceptional: his mother, Marie Heim-Vögtlin, was the first woman in Switzerland to practise medicine. The Heim household in Zurich was a centre of scientific and intellectual life throughout Arnold's childhood and youth.

The photograph reproduced here was taken in 1902 during a family cycling tour to Küsnacht, on the eastern shore of Lake Zurich, where the family made an excursion to the Küsnachter Horn — the summit rising above the town. The image belongs to a period when Swiss scientific families like the Heims combined professional fieldwork with an intimate, physically demanding relationship to the landscape they studied. To cycle to the foot of a mountain and climb it was not recreation but continuation: the same curiosity, the same attention to terrain, in a different register. Arnold Heim would spend his life in that spirit.

Fine Porcelain — 10 oz. Dishwasher and microwave safe.