Sorbitium Ices is a small, deliberately slow atelier of master ice carvers shaping monumental sculptures for galas, brand launches, weddings, and the moments you only get to host once.
Sorbitium Ices began in 2014 on a smallholding outside Mittenwald, where our founder, Elke Hartmann, watched her late father harvest clear ice from a mountain pond the way his own father had done before him. What started as winter weekend experiments with a borrowed chainsaw and a borrowed temperance turned, over seven years, into commissions for Michelin-starred chefs, three royal weddings, and a winter flagship window for a Parisian maison.
Today the studio operates out of a temperature-controlled atelier in Brooklyn, with a sister cold-room in Copenhagen. We keep the team deliberately small — five carvers, two technicians, and a logistics lead who can move a 380-kilogram block through midtown at 4 a.m. without a single puddle. Every sculpture that leaves the studio is signed, numbered, and photographed for our archive before it ever touches a stage.
"Ice is the only sculpture medium that argues with you in real time. It humbles you, it teaches you, and if you listen to it, it will tell you exactly what it wants to become." — Elke Hartmann, Founder
Every decision in the atelier — from the ice we buy to the way we pack a truck — is measured against the same three principles. They are not aspirations; they are the criteria a piece has to meet before it leaves the cold-room door.
We work only with optical-grade ice, frozen slowly in our partner mill in Upstate New York, and we refuse commissions that would force us to use a cloudy or rushed block. Visual clarity is a proxy for the clarity of the brief: if a client cannot tell us what they want, the ice will tell us first.
Every chip, melt, and offcut is captured. We return meltwater to our greywater system, donate small blocks to culinary schools, and crush usable fragments into the bar ice we supply to partner venues. A sculpture that disappears beautifully should also leave nothing ugly behind.
We do not use CNC mills, robotics, or laser cutters for the finished work. Every facet, every feathered edge, every internal void is cut by a person holding a chisel. Technology appears only in the planning — CAD models, thermal simulations, the logistics stack — never on the block.
The studio's working life, measured in blocks, miles, and the small details that don't usually make the press release.
A small, deliberately senior team. Every carver on the bench has at least nine years of professional ice work; every commission is led end-to-end by one of the four people below.
Founder & Lead Carver
Trained in woodcarving at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich before switching to ice full-time in 2012. Specialty: figurative and portrait work for galas.
Senior Carver · Geometric
Former Setouchi Triennale sculptor; joined Sorbitium in 2017. Owns the studio's hardest aesthetic: razor-straight facets on blocks up to 800 kilograms.
Senior Carver · Architectural
Trained as a stonemason at the Vocational School of Odense. Leads our Copenhagen cold-room and our largest architectural commissions: ice walls, arches, bars.
Studio Manager & Logistics
The reason a 380-kilogram block can move through midtown at 4 a.m. without a drop on the asphalt. Background in cold-chain pharmaceutical logistics; joined the studio in 2019.
The way a piece is made shapes the way it disappears. Here is the studio's working sequence, almost identical for every commission, from a single-block luge bar to a 4.5-metre installation.
Two weeks before the event, we sit with the client (in person or on a long call) and choose the block together: size, optical grade, axis of clarity, and the grain direction that will define the final silhouette.
The lead carver builds a 1:5 foam or clay maquette in the cold-room at 4°C, working at the same scale they will work at on the day. The model stays on the bench until the finished block is signed off.
On the day, two carvers work in parallel on the block, with a third on tool prep and melt management. The finished sculpture is signed, numbered, and photographed against a calibrated grey card.
We install on drip trays with hidden pumps, monitor the piece every 90 minutes, and at the end of the evening recover every usable fragment for our partner venues and culinary programs.
We host two studio visits a month for planners, brand teams, and curious private clients. You'll see working blocks on the bench, the maquette wall, and — if you're lucky — a piece in the final hour of carving. The kettle is always on.