Krafft, Georg Wolfgang, 1701-1754, author.
Description et représentation exacte de la maison de glace, construite a St. Petersbourg au mois de janvier 1740 et de tous les meubles qui s'y trouvoient : avec quelques remarques sur le froid en général, et particuliérement sur celui qu'on a senti cette même année dans toute l'Europe / composée et publiée ... par George Wolffgang Krafft ... ; traduit de l'allemand, par Pierre Louis Le Roy ...
A St. Petersbourg : de l'imprimerie de l'Academie des sciences, 1741.
32 pages, VI leaves of plates (some folded) : illustrations, plans ; 25 cm
First edition. The whim of the Empress Anna, this bizarre fantasy succeeded an earlier one begun on the ice of the Neva before it was thick enough to support the weight, and abandoned just in time. The new one, designed by the architect Eropkin and built near the Winter Palace, resembled a Palladian orangery or pavilion. Only the best and clearest ice was used for it, treated just as though it had been stone, being measured and scribed with compass and rule, and then sawn into ashlar blocks. For cement, water was merely poured over the joints, which instantly froze, giving the finished building the appearance of being sculpted from one huge single piece of ice, somewhat in the same genre as the enormous granite boulder transported to St. Petersburg a few years later as a base for Falconet's equestrian statue of Peter the Great. Of its effect Krafft says, "Ce batiment qui paroissoit d'une seule piece, faisoit sans contredit, un effet infiniment plus beau que s'il eut ete construit du marbre le plus rare, sa transparence & la couleur bleuatre le faisant paroitre d'une pierre bien plus precieuse que le marbre." Its three rooms had window panes of water thin ice: a double bed with linen and pillows of ice, two ice candlesticks, two pairs of ice bedroom slippers, and two ice night-caps - delicacy perhaps forbade taking the inventory any further; and all the tables, chairs, mirrors, even the plates and glasses, were also made of ice. Naphtha was used to fire ice logs in the ice fireplaces. A balustraded ice garden contained ornamental gates, trees, two large kentian pyramids, a life-size elephant, and six lathe-turned full-scale cannons which actually fired - everything again of ice. Witnessed by the entire court, one of these pieces put its cast iron ball through a 2-inch plank at 60 yards. There were also two 80-pounder mortars, and a pair of ice dolphins which from their mouths spewed flaming naphtha, "....ce qui faisoit la nuit un spectacle admirable." An ice bath was usable, supplied with hot water. The main facade was embellished with ice statues and ornaments, the doors and window frames perversely being painted green to look like malachite. Lit at night by a thousand girandoles, the effect must have been magical. Outside, sculpted ice birds, splendid and motionless, perched mutely on the branches of the ice trees in the depths of a winter ferocious without parallel, even by Russian standards, and which had the whole of Europe in its grip. Volshebnoye tsarstvo! Mais vraiment un royaume enchante! The possibly less enchanting immediate purpose of this folly of despotic follies, was, however, to serve for the wedding night of Prince Michael Galitzine, newly widowed and forced by the Empress, as a joke in dubious taste (or perhaps as part of her strategy or remove the Dolgorukys and the Galitzines from power?) to marry one of her servants, a supposedly hideous Kalmuck woman. That achieved, by early March the little palace was beginning to melt, and what was left was removed to the imperial ice cellars. Later that same year the Germanised Anna Ivanovna died. But for the prince and his bride it turned out to be a true marriage d'amour and they lived happily ever after, not only surviving their memorable wedding night and their eccentric Empress, but even living to see their unlikely union blessed with progeny. A Russian fairy tale indeed. Extremely rare, even in Russia. A pencil note in the endpaper quotes 'Moskovskiya Vyedmosti" as having said in 1857 that M.N. Longinov, when asked to find a copy for the then Prince Galitzine, wrote "the book is so rare that the only thing I can do is to consult someone who has seen a copy of it." Galitzine wanted the book for reference purposes - his intention being to build an ice-palace on the occasion of a wedding!" Published simultaneously in Russian, German, and French, it was already being described as rare in 1835, when the view of the facade appeared, reduced, and with a description of the book, in Lazecnikov's novel, The House of Ice. In 1873, the plates appeared again in "Russkaya Starina," and in 1887, a book and plates were reprinted with a preface by K. Griaznov. This copy has an oval bookplate with a salamander within a cartouche, bearing the name Khruschov in Russian.
Ice palaces Russia (Federation) Saint Petersburg Early works to 1800.
Ice palaces Early works to 1800.
Palais de glace Ouvrages avant 1800.
Palais de glace Russie Saint-Pétersbourg Ouvrages avant 1800.
Ice palaces
Etchings (prints)
Early works
Le Roy, Pierre Louis, 1699-1774, translator.
Hollis, Thomas, 1720-1774, former owner.
Pre-1801 Imprint Collection (Library of Congress)
Russia Sankt Peterburg.
Maison de glace
Location: Library cage 89433
Call No.: NA6890.K8 (ID:85-B12931)
Status: Available
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