Ice Festival Founder Ready To Sculpt Lifesize Horse And Wagon

When Rob Patalano was 16-years-old, he worked in a hotel restaurant, but what caught his eye wasn’t the food. Instead, it was the ice.

Every Sunday for the brunch crowd, the hotel’s chef would sculpt an ice swan. Patalano used to try and watch the chef ice sculpt whenever he could.

“I was very drawn to the process,” he said. “He would always chase me back inside to get back to work. It just looked like a fun thing to do.”

Due to labor laws, Patalano couldn’t use a chainsaw to sculpt, but four years later he got his opportunity.

“[The chef] went on vacation and I asked if I could do one and was granted permission,” Patalano said “I pulled the ice block out of the freezer to soften [it] and went to grab his tools, but he took them. So here I had my big chance and no tools, so I grabbed a meat cleaver and hacked a martini glass for Father’s Day brunch. It came out decent.”

He added that people don’t just let you start sculpting ice, so now that he had some experience, caterers and other hotels would ask him to sculpt when he mentioned he had experience with it.

It worked out well for Patalano, because at that point he was hooked.

“Ice has a magical quality and diamond-like beauty,” he said. “Its a very clean substance to work with compared to stone and wood, which can take months and years to complete a sculpture. Ice sculpture can be done in hours and it melts, and you get to have fun all over again.”

Patalano grew up in Valley Cottage and still lives in the area. He owns the Rockland Lake Ice Company, which makes hand-carved ice sculptures for hotel, country clubs, restaurants, weddings and more.

And in 2006, he was one of the founders of the , an annual event at Rockland Lake. The sixth annual festival is Jan. 28 and 29. Patalano is one of the at the festival each year, and his year he’ll sculpt a life-size horse and wagon. The sculpture will take 60 blocks of ice and has been an idea of Patalano’s for years now.

It was during his time moving from the culinary world to professional ice sculptor that Patalano became more interested in the history of the ice harvesting industry. He learned that there were around 150 ice houses along the Hudson River.

“It is very interesting how they used to cut and store ice with no refrigeration and the power of horses, man and crude tools,” he said, adding he’s started collecting antique ice harvesting tools, antique ice boxes, ice tongs, ice saws, ice wagon scales, breaker bars, ice axes, pikes and more. His favorite piece is a 100-year-old horse-drawn ice cutting plow and guide that belonged to the Knickerbocker Ice Company, which he knows because it has the company’s marking on it.

The largest ice harvesting company in the region back in the 1800s was the Knickerbocker Ice Company, which used iced from Rockland Lake. The blocks were cut from the lake and transported by horse-drawn wagons to wooden ice houses, which were insulted with sawdust to keep the ice frozen. This way the company could then deliver it in the warmer months.

One of the ice houses, Knickerbocker’s Ice House No. 3, still remains at Rockland Lake, as it’s been designated as a historic site in Clarkstown. Patalano said it’s 450 feet long, 150 feet wide and 12 feet high, and said that in 2006, the town was coming to designate it as a landmark when he was contacted by Timothy Englert, of the Palisades Interstate Park Commission, to see if he could do a sculpture for the ceremony.

Ten years earlier, Patalano was trying to get a yearly ice festival at the lake but the talks fell through. So in 2006, Patalano and Englert saw the opportunity for a yearly celebration at the park, birthing the Knickerbocker Ice Festival. Patalano said the first year they got about 500 and in the years since they’ve drawn thousands to Rockland Lake.

In the future, Patalon said he’d like to bring in more sculptors and have more attractions. Each year the festival has an ice sculpting contest, and this year there are , not including Patalano, who isn’t part of the contest.

He also said he’d like to bring out the Knickerbocker plow he owns and drag it on Rockland Lake, cut out blocks of ice and make a a castle. He said he’d also like to store the ice like they used to at the Lake and see how long it lasts.