The Sketches that Survived

Some things are lost in a fire.

And sometimes, among everything that disappears, something remains that you never expected to find.

Hi, I’m Joy Masagnay, a writer and creative partner at Meierz.

As I learn more about Heinz’s sketches and the stories behind them, I’m reminded that sometimes the things we hold onto carry far more meaning than we realize.

When I first heard the story of Heinz’s sketches, it was the safe that stayed with me.

In 2025, a wildfire in Pacific Palisades destroyed the family home. Along with the house went so many of the things that had quietly become part of family life over the years: belongings, photographs, papers, and the countless small things that we rarely think about until they are no longer there.

But one thing survived. An underground safe. What was inside? Heinz’s sketches. 

And his sons, Philip and Thomas, were the ones who found it and were able to recover the drawings. Heinz was an architect and a traveller. Over the years, he sketched the places that caught his attention: old buildings, villages, landscapes, and the details of places he encountered along the way.

They were never intended to be grand works of art.

They were simply sketches.

A way of looking more closely at a place.

A way of remembering it.

For an architect, perhaps drawing was also a natural way of seeing. Rather than simply passing through, Heinz would stop and observe. The shape of a building, the character of a street, the way a landscape came together, things that caught his eye along the way.

At the time, these drawings were simply part of his travels. He made them, kept them, and moved on.

It was only after the fire that their significance became clearer. The sketches had survived when everything else did not.

They were no longer just drawings of places Heinz had visited. They had become a surviving piece of his own history, a tangible connection to the years he had spent travelling, observing, and putting what he saw onto paper.

I think that is what makes them special.

You can see where Heinz chose to look. You can see what interested him.

And, in a small way, you can imagine the moment in which he sat down and decided that a particular place was worth drawing.

There is something lovely about that kind of record.

Today, we take photographs almost without thinking. We can capture hundreds of images in a single day and move on just as quickly.

A sketch asks something different.

It asks you to stop. To look. To notice.

And perhaps that is part of what these drawings have carried with them all these years.

Now, they are beginning another chapter.

Some of Heinz’s sketches are being reproduced as small keepsakes that can be given, framed, displayed, or simply kept.

A drawing that once belonged to a particular journey can now become part of someone else's home. A place Heinz once stopped to sketch might become something that catches another person's eye years later.

In that way, the sketches continue to travel.

Their journey simply looks different now.

What started as a personal record of places Heinz had seen has become a way of sharing a little piece of his story with others.

After the fire, these drawings could have remained safely tucked away, kept as something precious because of what they represented.

Instead, they are being given another life. Not as replicas of something that was lost, but as reminders of something that remained.

A journey. A memory. A few lines on a page.

Sometimes, that is all we need to keep a memory close.

And sometimes, a drawing is more than a drawing.

Sometimes, it is a memory that found a way to stay.