FROST FANCIES

DURING the intense cold of the past forty-eight hours, the great panes of large plate-glass ­windows throughout the city pres­ented scenes of such beauty as the artistic Spirit of the Frost seldom favors us with. The crystallizations were frequently on a gigantic scale—in likeness of such arabesque vegetation, ­although ­colorless, as somehow awakened fancies of strange fretwork about the moresque arches of the crystal palaces described in the Arabian Nights. Sometimes they pre­sented such a combination of variedly intricate patterns, as to suggest a possible source for the fantastic scroll-work designs employed by the monkish ­­masters of mediæval illumination in the decoration of their famous missals and manuscripts. There were double volutes of sharp-edged leaf design, such as occasionally formed a design for ele­gant vase handles with the antique proficients in the ceramic art; damascene patterns, broken by irregular markings like Cufic characters on a scimitar-blade; feathery interweavings of inimitable delicacy, such as might form elfin plumage for the wings of a frost-spirit; spectral mosses, surpassing in their ephemeral beauty the most velvety growths of our vegetable world; ghost ferns, whose loveliness attracts the eye, but fades into airy ­nothingness ­under the breath of the admirer; evanescent shrubs of some fairy species, undreamt of in our botanical science; and snowy plumes, fit to grace the helmet of a phantom-knight, shaming the richest art of devisers in rare heraldic emblems. At moments the December sun intensified the brilliancy of these coruscations of frost-fire: lance-rays of solar flame, shivered into myriad sparkles against the glittering mail of interwoven crystals, tinged all the scintillating work with a fairy-faint reflection of such iridescence as flames upon a humming bird’s bosom. The splendor of the frost-work was yesterday everywhere a ­matter of curious comment, and such a variety of pattern—­often of a peculiarly “large-leaved” design—has not been seen for years in the city. On Walnut street, near Seventh, was a very beautiful and peculiar specimen of crystallization in a shop ­window. It pres­ented the aspect of narrow-bladed wild grasses, thickly growing, and luxuriant; stems shot up bare to a certain height, when leaves sprouted from them on ­either side, bending suddenly downward at a sharp angle shortly ­after leaving the stem, in exquisite rivalry of nature. But at a certain height the pattern lost distinctness, and blended into a sharply bristling wilderness of grass-blades, so that the general ­effect, like that of a rough etching, was best observable at a short distance. The unearthly artist who created the scene, however, was not content with rivaling nature, for his wild grasses terminated beautifully but weirdly in a wild fantasy of leaf scrolls, which resembled ­nothing in the world of green things growing.

Cincinnati Commercial, December 10, 1876