A Room Made Completely of Chocolate!
This museum is good enough to eat...
November 25 2004 at 05:45PM
By Ernest Gill
Hamburg - Arguably the sweetest room in the world opened its doors to the public on Thursday - a parlour decorated and furnished entirely in chocolate.
The walls are panelled in dark chocolate. The ceiling is white chocolate with marzipan almond-paste mouldings. All the furniture is chocolate-coated.
Even the vases, dinnerware and cutlery on the chocolate-covered Biedermeier table are formed from solid chocolate, as are the ornate picture frames on the dark brown walls.
'I felt a bit like the witch in the Brothers Grimm fairytale'
In fact, the only thing in the room that is not high in calories is the parquet flooring - although it is chocolate brown to match everything else.
This delectable room is a venerable German chocolate manufacturer's way of marking its 200th anniversary. The Halloren Chocolate Company is Germany's oldest candy manufacturer and its boss says he wanted to do something really memorable.
'We wondered what we could do to celebrate the founding of our company in 1804 and finally decided what better way than to create a vintage 1804 interior fashioned entirely from chocolate,' said Klaus Lell, head of the Halloren Cholcolate Company during the grand unveiling in Halle in eastern Germany.
'I think we can safely say this is the one and only full-scale room made exclusively out of candy,' he explained as news cameras captured every tasty inch of the room, which is located in the Halloren company museum, adjacent to the candy plant.
The 17-square-metre room is the result of months of painstaking work since every delicious element had to be created by hand - all 800kg of chocolate candy.
'It was not only an artistic challenge'
The bitter chocolate panels for the wall coverings are 1,8m high and they are complemented by more than a hundred 50cm squares of alternating dark chocolate and milk chocolate used as decorative woodwork.
The Biedermeier furnishings are coated in chocolate of varying shades of brown. Even the knick-knacks in the glass-fronted Biedermeier cabinet, including a bust of Bach, are formed out of chocolate.
A 60cm high vase adorned with the silhouette of Georg Friedrich Handel is made from dark chocolate with curlyque ornamentation in white chocolate and milk chocolate.
Even the fancy candlesticks are chocolate, along with the candles themselves.
It is something of an anti-climax to note that the chocolate candy dish is filled with chocolate candies. Not surprisingly, they are Original Halloren Kugeln, small spheres of chocolate wrapped in gold foil that are the company's best-known and most popular product.
In addition the production programme includes select chocolates, bars and marzipan specialities through to chocolate-coated and candied jellies, rum balls and coconut flakes. Select seasonal articles round out the Halloren assortment.
One of the widest-known names in candy-making, Halloren started out back in 1804 as a honey cake bakery.
The chocolate parlour is the brainchild of chief candymaker Claudia Heimann, who single-handedly fashioned most of the components for the room.
'I felt a bit like the witch in the Brothers Grimm fairytale Hansel And Gretel who made her cottage out of candy,' she explains. 'It was not only an artistic challenge but also something of an engineering challenge, since I had to throw out some designs that literally didn't stand up to the task of being decorative furnishings.'
She was assisted by a team of young trainees in the actual assembly of the wall coverings and ceiling tiles.
'We had to be exceedingly careful, since most of the items were handmade by me,' the 34-year-old sweets specialist recalls. 'There was no going back to the hardware store for replacements if anything chipped or broke.'
Proudly surveying her chocolate creation, Heimann says she has no fears of museum visitors eating the furnishings.
'This is a candy factory, after all,' she notes. 'Heaven knows we have enough to satisfy any sweet tooth. Visitors don't have to resort to eating the woodwork here.' - Sapa-dpa
November 25 2004 at 05:45PM
By Ernest Gill
Hamburg - Arguably the sweetest room in the world opened its doors to the public on Thursday - a parlour decorated and furnished entirely in chocolate.
The walls are panelled in dark chocolate. The ceiling is white chocolate with marzipan almond-paste mouldings. All the furniture is chocolate-coated.
Even the vases, dinnerware and cutlery on the chocolate-covered Biedermeier table are formed from solid chocolate, as are the ornate picture frames on the dark brown walls.
'I felt a bit like the witch in the Brothers Grimm fairytale'
In fact, the only thing in the room that is not high in calories is the parquet flooring - although it is chocolate brown to match everything else.
This delectable room is a venerable German chocolate manufacturer's way of marking its 200th anniversary. The Halloren Chocolate Company is Germany's oldest candy manufacturer and its boss says he wanted to do something really memorable.
'We wondered what we could do to celebrate the founding of our company in 1804 and finally decided what better way than to create a vintage 1804 interior fashioned entirely from chocolate,' said Klaus Lell, head of the Halloren Cholcolate Company during the grand unveiling in Halle in eastern Germany.
'I think we can safely say this is the one and only full-scale room made exclusively out of candy,' he explained as news cameras captured every tasty inch of the room, which is located in the Halloren company museum, adjacent to the candy plant.
The 17-square-metre room is the result of months of painstaking work since every delicious element had to be created by hand - all 800kg of chocolate candy.
'It was not only an artistic challenge'
The bitter chocolate panels for the wall coverings are 1,8m high and they are complemented by more than a hundred 50cm squares of alternating dark chocolate and milk chocolate used as decorative woodwork.
The Biedermeier furnishings are coated in chocolate of varying shades of brown. Even the knick-knacks in the glass-fronted Biedermeier cabinet, including a bust of Bach, are formed out of chocolate.
A 60cm high vase adorned with the silhouette of Georg Friedrich Handel is made from dark chocolate with curlyque ornamentation in white chocolate and milk chocolate.
Even the fancy candlesticks are chocolate, along with the candles themselves.
It is something of an anti-climax to note that the chocolate candy dish is filled with chocolate candies. Not surprisingly, they are Original Halloren Kugeln, small spheres of chocolate wrapped in gold foil that are the company's best-known and most popular product.
In addition the production programme includes select chocolates, bars and marzipan specialities through to chocolate-coated and candied jellies, rum balls and coconut flakes. Select seasonal articles round out the Halloren assortment.
One of the widest-known names in candy-making, Halloren started out back in 1804 as a honey cake bakery.
The chocolate parlour is the brainchild of chief candymaker Claudia Heimann, who single-handedly fashioned most of the components for the room.
'I felt a bit like the witch in the Brothers Grimm fairytale Hansel And Gretel who made her cottage out of candy,' she explains. 'It was not only an artistic challenge but also something of an engineering challenge, since I had to throw out some designs that literally didn't stand up to the task of being decorative furnishings.'
She was assisted by a team of young trainees in the actual assembly of the wall coverings and ceiling tiles.
'We had to be exceedingly careful, since most of the items were handmade by me,' the 34-year-old sweets specialist recalls. 'There was no going back to the hardware store for replacements if anything chipped or broke.'
Proudly surveying her chocolate creation, Heimann says she has no fears of museum visitors eating the furnishings.
'This is a candy factory, after all,' she notes. 'Heaven knows we have enough to satisfy any sweet tooth. Visitors don't have to resort to eating the woodwork here.' - Sapa-dpa
