Bring Courchevel to your Home

For one (or possibly two) weeks of the year, you travel to the snowy peaks and pistes of your favourite resort and find yourself in one of the most beautiful places on the planet. The chances are it’s somewhere that holds special memories and evokes unique feelings: time with friends and family, exhilarating runs through fresh powder fields, or marathon skis that test you to your limits.

However, for the remaining 50+ weeks of the year, the mountains feel distant and abstract: the photographs that you took don’t quite capture the true sense of the mountains, the retro ski poster you bought in the resort has never been framed (and it doesn’t really fit with the décor of the rest of your home), and reproduction piste signs from online marketplaces just aren’t your thing.

If you’re looking for the perfect way to bring memories of the mountains into your home, sculptor Simon Gottschalk has created a must-have piece of art: made of bronze and weighing over 6kgs (that’s about 1 stone to you and me!), he has sculpted a stunning representation of the Courchevel valleys. 

“I’d always loved the original piste maps of Pierre Novat because they brought the mountains to life and showed how it is possible to go beyond simple topography and map-making to create art that encapsulates the spirit of mountains.” Gottschalk also had memories of the plastic 3D maps often seen in tourist offices; “they just didn’t seem real. And they certainly didn’t represent what it felt like to ski those same mountains: 3D prints and heat-moulded plastic maps left me very cold”.

Using his knowledge of the Courchevel ski area, accumulated from almost two decades of skiing there, he started to sculpt something that could evoke memories and majesty of his beloved mountains. The result is Verdons: a bronze sculpture that takes its name from the rolling green piste that carries skiers back home to the resort at 1850.

With a footprint similar to that of a large coffee table book, the sculpture combines that level of detail needed to be able to make out your favourite pistes (or chalets!), whilst still feeling like a piece of art. Delicate lines sculpted into the bronze show the roads that hairpin into each level of the resort, and the jagged peaks of Saulire rise out of smooth pistes.

Being made out of bronze, the sculpture has a natural physicality to it, and the different textures of rock, forest and snow make it very tactile. Whether you want to use it to debate with friends which the best piste is, or simply look at it and think “I’ve conquered those mountains!”, Verdons is ideal for those whose heart is in the mountains.

Verdons is available either direct from Summit Sculpture (https://www.summitsculpture.com), or via Etsy (https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/989676064/)

Discover Our Luxury Chalets in Courchevel 1850 below…