As a full-time denizen of the wilder lands of Colorado, I consider myself lucky to be around such relative splendor of the mountainous variety. And even though there’s scant state-side competition to Colorado’s peaks, across the ocean there are promontories aplenty that surpass our collection of fourteeners.

Echos, drawers. Designed by Pour Les Alpes.

The Alps for one. Home to such white-knuckling monikers as “Matterhorn” and “Eiger,” the Alps’ assortment of ice-covered massifs and bottomless crevasses makes most North American mountaineers run to Aspen and hide for cover (excepting, of course, noted Eiger-skier and Aspen local Chris Davenport). “What’s all this blather about mountains in a design blog?” You may be wondering. Just getting to that… And your answer is this: the “Echos” Collection by Pour Les Alpes.

Conceived of as a tribute to and re-contextualization of traditional artisanal crafts, Echos consists of a limited edition release of three chests of drawers “created in close cooperation with five different artisan craftsmen from two Swiss regions, Grinsons and Appenzell … the individual objects are a tribute to the Swiss Alps and are, in a formal and symbolical way, referring to the alpine-culture-rooted identity.” Each of these side table-come-bureau pieces is connected to Swiss culture in a distinct way: “Neugierde” (curiosity) evokes shingle-making and the daily show of eerie luminescence called “Alpenglow”; “Sehnsucht” (desire) features an evocative trail of traditional Swiss lace spidering up one of the piece’s four legs, with patterns and colors inspired by the nearby glaciers; and my favorite-thus betraying my penchant for the sublime-”Ehrfurcht” (reverence) suggests the range’s forbidding nature.

Inspired by the raw and unpredictable nature of the Alps, Ehrfurcht is a forbidding and impenetrable ebony (one is reminded of the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey), the glossy surface troubled only by an unsettling if tempting fissure bisecting the piece diagonally. Further exploration reveals this to be the table’s central hinge, a whole 33% of its mass opening to reveal an ample storage space set off in hand-carved pine, the chiseled wood a topographical facsimile of that forbidding terrain wherein even the intrepid Hannibal lost an eye.

In conceiving of this collection, designers Tina Stieger and Annina Gähwiler say they strove for “individuality with the main focus on creating unique objects with a strong originality.” Ehrfurcht certainly meets this criteria. With their winning fusion of functionality and a regionalized contemporary aesthetic, Pour Les Alpes has forged a unique collectible indeed. Anyone whose flights of fancy have ever transported them into the dark chasm of a terrestrial abyss will be compelled to have a closer look.