Toni Mair (1940–2015)

Toni Mair died on the 8th of August 2015 at the age of 75. Toni was an outstanding relief builder. In many museums his works, which he created with ample love for details and scientific meticulousness, are to be admired. We will always honour Toni in our memories.

Portrait Toni Mair

Toni Mair, a former high school teacher of geography and geology passionately created alpine landscape models made of plaster. After his retirement in 2002 he invested most of his time for crafting relief models and worked professionaly in the field of relief modeling. Several dozen beautifully crafted models exist today which testify to Mair’s creativity (full list). Most of them are true copies of the natural terrain displayed and they are also coloured geologically. One of his masterpieces is the relief of Canton Aargau with its huge dimension of 23 m2. It is displayed at the museum naturama in Aarau. In addition, Toni Mair restored models for museums and exhibitions, e.g. Imhof's Bietschhorn relief [2].

More information at www.mair-relief.ch

  Relief Dent Blanche

Dent Blanche (Switzerland) 1:5,000, 104 x 115 cm, Toni Mair, 2005, copies are displayed at Focus Terra exhibition in Zurich, and at Cabane de la Dent Blanche.
Engelberg relief
Eiger north face relief
Semien National Park, Ethiopia

[1] Mair, Toni. Grieder Susanne. Das Landschaftsrelief – Symbiose von Wissenschaft und Kunsthandwerk. Mit Schweizer Reliefkatalog. Verlag hier+jetzt. Baden, Schweiz. 2006. S.176.

[2] Räber, Stefan. Le relief du Bietschhorn – Restauration d'une montagne. Les Alpes, 11/2006. Club Alpin Suisse CAS, Berne, p.36-37. 2006, pdf.