Matterhorn
— the shape a child draws when you say mountain.
Not only on a wall.
“Four faces, each pointing to a compass direction, rising to 4,478 metres above Zermatt. The north face was not climbed until 1931, the last of the great Alpine north walls to fall. The Swiss village below is still car-free; the trains arrive from Visp and the light shifts off the east face from pink to gold to white. The mountain is its own weather.
Matterhorn, 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.
The place, in three passes.
The Matterhorn stands on the border between Switzerland and Italy, in the Pennine Alps, rising to 4,478 metres. Its four ridges point almost exactly to the four cardinal directions, and its four faces give it the near-symmetrical pyramid that makes the silhouette unmistakable. The Swiss village of Zermatt sits at 1,620 metres on the north side; the Italian village of Breuil-Cervinia sits at 2,050 metres on the south. The first ascent was made in July 1865 by Edward Whymper's party from Zermatt.
The east face catches the first sun and lights up before the valley below has come out of shadow. The Riffelsee, a small lake at 2,757 metres above Zermatt, reflects the mountain at dawn when there is no wind; the walk up from the Rotenboden station takes about ten minutes. Late afternoon turns the rock to ochre and the snowfields to rose. The Gornergrat railway, opened in 1898, brings visitors to 3,089 metres for the long view of the east face.
Zermatt is reached only by train; cars are left in Täsch, five kilometres down the valley, with a shuttle running every twenty minutes. The Gornergratbahn climbs from the village to 3,089 metres in about thirty-three minutes, the highest open-air rack railway in Europe. The mountain itself is a serious climb, generally from the Hörnli hut at 3,260 metres, but the views from Riffelsee, Gornergrat, and Schwarzsee are accessible to anyone who can walk.