Ice, hand-carved into the moment your guests will not forget.
From a single luminous luge at a private dinner to a sixteen-foot centerpiece suspended over a ballroom, every Sorbitium Ices commission is shaped by hand, in your room, in front of your people. Below is exactly what we make, how we work, and what it costs.
Every service below can be commissioned on its own or combined into a single, multi-stage event program. Most clients begin with one piece and return with a brief for a season of work.
Live Carving Performances
A carver, a block, and an audience that does not want to look away. We arrive ninety minutes before guests, set up under your lighting, and shape a sculpture in real time — chainsaw rough-out, fine chisels, polish — finishing in forty-five to ninety minutes. Ideal for receptions, product launches, and brand activations where the making is part of the message.
45 – 90 minutes on stage
One or two carvers, full PPE under your venue rules
Branded signage on the drip tray, optional
Finished piece stays for the full event
Bespoke Table Centerpieces
Heirloom-grade centerpieces for the table you actually sat at. Each one is drawn against your florals, your linen, your candle profile, and the height of your guests' eye line. Roses, geometric grids, monograms, single florals frozen inside clear blocks — the only limit is the size of your tray and the patience of your photographer.
8 – 80 pieces per event
Drawn against your floral and table design
Carved off-site, delivered pre-event on trays
Replaced mid-event for multi-course dinners
Large-Scale Installations
Architectural pieces for ballrooms, atriums, and tented pavilions. Suspended chandeliers, freestanding obelisks, a frozen city skyline twelve feet long — engineered with your venue's structural team, transported in our refrigerated trucks, and assembled on a sub-floor that protects your marble. We work in CAD before we work in ice.
8 – 16 ft installations
CAD drawings and load calcs shared with venue
Modular block construction, joined on site
Lighting integration with your AV partner
Bar & Lounge Features
The things your bartender will fight you for. Six-foot ice luges with custom channel geometry, luge walls branded for the sponsor, an ice-topped bar front that pours light across the room, an ice-bucket suite numbered for a hundred covers, or an entire back-bar carved from a single block. Built to be photographed, used, and drained.
From 3ft luge to full back-bar
Custom channel design, tuned to pour speed
Branded sponsor walls, etched at any depth
Drip tray, drainage, and towel service included
Speedy Bar & Caviar Service
The smallest things we make, and often the most photographed. Hand-carved ice bowls for service of caviar, oysters, or sashimi; tasting-glacier trays for chilled sake or vodka flights; numbered shot totems for a hundred-seat tasting. Designed to melt gracefully, without leaking across a white linen tablecloth.
Service-ready, melt-controlled
4-hour melt curve, tuned to your service window
Available in matching sets for full restaurant service
Monogram or house mark on the rim, optional
Seasonal & Brand Programs
Recurring commissions for hotels, restaurants, and brands who want ice to be part of the calendar. A weekly centerpiece for a private dining room. A holiday installation for a flagship. A quarterly content asset for a spirits launch. We hold freezer capacity, retain a carve team, and bill on a retainer you can scale up or down between seasons.
Ice is unforgiving. It arrives cold, leaves wet, and cannot be edited. The only way to make it look effortless is to think about it for weeks before the truck rolls. Here is the timeline we run on almost every commission.
01
Brief & Site Visit
We start with a thirty-minute call, then a visit to your venue when it counts. We measure doorways, check floor loads, look at the lighting cues, and walk the guest path. For remote clients we do the same on a video call with your floor plan. You receive a one-page brief back within 48 hours.
02
Design & Block Plan
We draw the piece in CAD, then draw it again in the block. Every Sorbitium Ices sculpture begins as a numbered block plan — a production drawing that tells the carver exactly which block becomes which surface, and how every seam hides in shadow. You see sketches, renderings, and a small maquette carved in our studio.
03
Off-Site Carve & Cure
All non-architectural pieces are roughed out in our temperature-controlled studio two to five days ahead of your event. They cure in our holding freezers at the precise temperature that gives our ice its signature clarity. By the time the truck arrives, the sculpture is already 70% done.
04
On-Site Finish & Reveal
We arrive three to four hours before your guests. Final detailing, polish, lighting, and placement — done before the first coat is checked. For live carves, we arrive ninety minutes before and finish in front of the room. Either way, the piece meets the moment, not the other way around.
Investment levels
Three ways to work with us.
Pricing reflects block, carver hours, transportation, and on-site time. Most single-event commissions land in the Signature tier; large-scale installations and seasonal programs live in Atelier. Custom work is quoted against your brief.
Most ice companies sell a service. We are a small studio of carvers, lighting designers, and production leads who have been on the receiving end of an event that did not go to plan. We build the operation backward from the moment the lights come up.
14
Years on the tools
Every lead carver has been shaping ice professionally for over a decade, and most of us came up under festival and theater carvers in the Nordic tradition. We do not subcontract the work to whoever is free that weekend.
240+
Events shaped by hand
Private dinners, hotel installations, brand launches, and one wedding that ran for three days. Roughly a third of our calendar each year is work for clients we have served before. That is the part of the job we are most proud of.
100%
Insured and union-compliant
Two million in general liability, workers' comp for every carver, and a track record of working inside the strictest venue rules in the country — from the Baccarat to the Brooklyn Navy Yard. We hand your risk manager the certificate before they ask.
From the floor
Words from the people who paid the bill.
We could tell you ice is transformative. We would rather let the people who have stood in front of a Sorbitium piece, in their venue, with their guests, do that.
The carver showed up at four in the afternoon, set up a block the size of a toddler, and by the time the first guest reached the bar the lobby had a frozen chandelier hanging from the ceiling. We had to physically stop people from taking photographs. It was the easiest decision of the evening.
EM
Elena Marchetti
Director of Private Events, Maison Verre · New York
We hired Sorbitium for a single luge and ended up rebuilding our entire bar program around them. The team sent a CAD drawing, a melt chart, a backup melt chart, and a person who answered the phone on a Saturday in July. I have worked with agencies three times their size that delivered half of that.
JR
James Rosenthal
Head of Brand Experience, Halsey Spirits · Brooklyn
Next step
Tell us the date, the room, and the mood.
A short note is enough. We will come back with the questions, and a few references from past work that looked like yours. Most briefs turn into a quote within five working days.