Making an Arare or Hobnail Hailstone Ice Lantern

A difficult but rewarding way to make a fancy ice lantern

After seeing a metal pot with an unusual raised pattern at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts in late 2015, I was inspired to try to duplicate it in an ice lantern.

My first attempt, from an ice lantern
made in the home freezer and decorated
indoors in time to put outside when the
first cold spell arrived.

Soon after that, I began to look for the origin of the pattern and found that there are at least two sources for this design -- both referencing cold precipitation.  The Japanese word "Arare" is sometimes translated as "hailstone" but refers to a type of precipitation that is softer than an ordinary hailstone.  It's known in German as "graupel," and that word is also used in meteorology to indicate balls of snow with an icy coating.  Cast-iron teapots have been produced in Japan for a few centuries with a raised bump pattern with the name "Arare," while a similar glassware pattern that seems to have come from Bohemia and to have been popular in the early 1900's in the US is known as "Hobnail hailstone."

The first small ice lantern that I made this way attracted an unusual amount of attention from passers-by. That, and the connection with arts and crafts related to weather, made me want to keep making these, despite the large amount of work involved, and the cold fingers.

A second Arare / hobnail-hailstone ice lantern

Cold weather kept this Arare ice lantern in
good condition for almost two weeks.

When the second of these luminaries succumbed to sunlight and a slight thaw in January 2016, I began a third one.  It starts as a customary ice lantern in a balloon, with trays of tiny cocktail ice "cubes" in gumdrop shape.

An ice lantern frozen in an ordinary balloon,
placed on cooking parchment to allow it to be
rotated easily.  The trays for the ice "gumdrops"
are filled to less than full capacity, so that the little
"cubes" are slightly concave, which lets them
fit tighter on the convex surface of the luminary.

The 60-cell ice cube tray seen from below
and above.  The dots adhere best to the
convex surface of a globe if they are
slightly concave.  Slightly underfilling
the cells (by sloshing out some water)
produces the best shape for welding on.

As I started making larger Arare
ice lanterns, we ordered a pack
of three more trays from Amazon

I start applying the "bumps" around the top, and add them one row at a time, first dipping them into ice water, then sliding them upward a little over the surface of the ice lantern before pressing them into place.

The first row is the most difficult to
keep in place, which seems odd,
because it's on a level surface.

Once the first two rows were in place, I attended to some other tasks to give those a chance to harden.  It's a difficult balance, keeping the working surface cold enough to "weld" the ice decorations solidly in place, while not risking heat shock from having liquid water touch a surface that is too far below the freezing point (which can crack the ice).  

At the right side of the picture is a
bucket of cold water that came from the
inside of the ice globe when I unmolded
it.  Everything has to be very cold for
this method to work.

There were enough ice "cubes" for five rows, so as soon as I emptied the trays, I dipped them in the ice water and set them to freeze again, leaving the luminary to complete later.

The rows sometimes become uneven.  When that happens, I look for larger or smaller ice "cubes" -- there being quite a bit of variation in the size when the trays are filled a little below the top.  Turning the ice globe while adding the decorations makes it easier to keep the rows even.

Two trays of the ice gumdrops covered under half of this ice globe, which is larger than the two earlier ones, so the decoration required filling our two trays three times (hence the order for more trays).  

The ice globe with five rows of "hailstones"
in place, waiting for another two trays of
them to freeze.

A late-night addition of almost five
more rows, as the temperature dropped
to near zero Fahrenheit.

Making and decorating ice lanterns at below-zero (F) temperatures becomes an "Extreme Sport."  Applying wet pieces of ice with bare fingers requires frequent warm-up stops.  

The water that I was using to moisten the
ice pieces began to freeze in the container
as I added the last few rows.

After setting the completed ice lantern on another ice globe that was turned upside down, I mounted the finished luminary on an earlier ice base.

Finished and ready for evening, the
"Arare" ice luminary glows in the
morning sunlight.

There's a "magic" moment just after sunset when a deep blue spreads over the sky, but the horizon still glows in gold and green..  At that point, the candle-lit ice lanterns shine with an intense inner fire.

The Arare ice lantern reveals the
glow that makes it a special favorite.

Despite using an upside-down ice lantern for a base, so that there was an extra layer of ice to support the candle, I couldn't keep the floor of the Arare lantern from melting through.  Water collected in the "fishbowl" below, and I ended up using a floating candle there to illuminate the lantern as it gradually melted away.  Although the base was an upside-down ice lantern, with an opening on the bottom, it had sealed so tightly to the column of earlier ice lanterns that it held a pool of icy water.

A floating candle in the ice lantern that
served as a base provided the light for
the luminary's last few days.

Losing its upper rings of ice
decorations and having its floor
melt away couldn't dim the beauty
of this special ice luminary.

Further ice lanterns of this type included the fourth one, which I made for the Luminary Loppet "Enchanted Forest" by Lake of the Isles:

An Arare ice lantern at the Minneapolis
Luminary Loppet event February 6, 2016

... and another ice lantern for our home:

My fifth Arare ice lantern, mounted
on a globe made in a punch balloon.

...followed by the largest so far, made on a Wintercraft ice globe and covered with more than 400 of the gumdrop-shaped ice "cubes" for the Middlemoon Creekwalk south of Lake Harriet in Minneapolis from February 14 through 17, 2016.

This luminary took three days
to make, because cold temperatures
limited the amount of time I could
work on it outdoors.

At the Middlemoon Creekwalk 2016, we ran out of time for setting up displays on Valentine's Day -- the first night that the lanterns were lit.  Additional ice from Wintercraft's extensive collection of ice glass provided a stunning backdrop on the second night and for the later lightings.

The sixth and largest of the
Arare ice lanterns, on display
at the Middlemoon Creekwalk

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