Ice Carving

Known for their elegance, ice carvings are the quintessential icon of the culinary arts.

Typically displayed focal points at food stations, they lend their spectacular, captivating flair to glimmering ice bars that amaze all that witness and to the trendy beverage service dispensed from pure frozen art. Though grand carvings make an impressive statement, the small specialized ice amenities are novel ways to serve sorbets & salads, table top centerpieces, globes, personalized icons as well as ice glassware.

Your guest may not see their future as they gaze into the brilliantly clear carvings but they will remember its allure and their childlike fascination with it. That is why they lend themselves so naturally to any occasion. From the professional corporate event to the formal social gala, ice carvings embellish their surroundings with elegance. The carvings convey to your guest that this is a special event!

Sacramento’s renowned ice carving company originated in 1978 as White Crane Ice Carvings providing professionally hand carved sculptures to caterers and hotels for their buffets and special events. In 1986 White Crane Ice Carvings formulated a process that allowed colored ice to be inlaid into ice carvings allowing custom corporate logos to be faithfully reproduced without the colors running. By 1989 the process was perfected and the company built its reputation on perfect color inlaid logos long before any other ice company in California. In 1993 Lawrence Crane, owner of White Crane Ice Carvings married Susan Austin, owner of Balloon Celebrations, merging their lives and businesses to form their new company: The Party Concierge.

The New Ice Age:

Today the ice carving business has seen great changes. Clinebell, a small company in Fort Collins, Colorado changed ice block manufacturing forever. They introduced a block machine that simply, and without the usual industrial equipment, produced a perfectly clear block of ice. Carvers now had creative control of their ice production and would no longer would need to purchase their blocks from large industrial ice plants.

With the advent of computer controlled routers (CNC), the ice world took another giant step. Known for so many innovative tools that changed how we look at carving ice today, Julian Bailey of Ice Culture, Canada, worked to design a router that would run dependably in the cold environment of a freezer. These two advances brought ice carving from ammonia plants, chain saws, templates and chisels into a clear, precise, automated production line. The Artist is still the inspiration, but the boundaries have been shattered.

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