Hans Aeschbach: Swiss Alps Calling, 1951 – Porcelain Art Mug

A strong silhouette, a handful of colours handled at maximum contrast, a direct address that reads instantly at the scale of a railway concourse or a travel agency window. Hans Aeschbach's Swiss Alps Calling of 1951 belongs to the postwar moment when travel was resuming, when the Alps were being reconceived as a destination for an expanding tourist market, and when graphic design was the medium through which that invitation was issued.

Swiss tourism poster design reached its classic period in the decades after the Second World War, when a generation of trained graphic artists were commissioned by the Swiss Federal Railways, cantonal tourism offices and the Swiss Tourist Board to draw visitors to a country that had emerged from the war years largely intact. Aeschbach worked in that tradition, in the bold, flat-colour idiom that Swiss graphic design had made internationally influential. The poster is now a historical document as well as a visual pleasure: a record of how Switzerland presented itself to the world at a specific moment in the twentieth century.

Fine porcelain, 10 oz — 104 mm high, 75 mm across the base. The image runs around the body; handle and rim stay white. Dishwasher and microwave safe.

Hans Aeschbach (1911–1999), Swiss Alps Calling, 1951, tourism poster. Reproduced by permission of the Aeschbach family. Foto: Plakatsammlung, Museum für Gestaltung Zürich, ZHdK.

Selected by Dr. Walther Fuchs for the Tazzarte collection.