Wooden skates with a metal blade were produced at the end of the 19th century by factory “Jarigs Nooitgedagt & Zn.” Metal blades were attached to a lacquered base of light wood. Such skates were put on shoes using leather fasteners with metal closings.
At the second half of the 19th century, the St. Petersburg aristocracy became interested in ice skating. The popularity of that hobby was associated with the fact that Alexander II’s sons grew up — Cesarevich Nikolay Aleksandrovich and his brothers, and a skating rink with slides in the guarded Taurida Garden was arranged for them for winter entertainment. As a result, the skating rink of the Taurida Garden became a place of informal acquaintance and communication between young grand dukes and their peers. In the diary notes of their educators, one can find many references to the visits of the grand dukes to the skating rink of the Taurida Garden. The sovereign came there with Grand Duchess Maria Aleksandrovna. Grand Dukes Alexander, Vladimir, Aleksey Aleksandrovich often came to the skating rink to play ball, and skated from two to four hours every day, accompanied by friends — the princes of Oldenburg, the Dukes of Leuchtenberg, and numerous adjutants.
In his humorous poem ‘Taurida’, which was published in 1863, Prince Vladimir Meshchersky wrote: ‘Old men, old women, mature and immature people were seized by a feverish passion to buy skates, put them on, gallop to the Taurida Garden, fall twenty times a minute, etc. There were people who put on skates and flew around all the rooms under the pretext of preparing for the Taurida skiing in the morning after tea or coffee, instead of reading newspapers or office work’.
At the second half of the 19th century, special skating rinks began to be flooded, for which the site was fenced. The first such skating rink appeared in St. Petersburg in 1865. The ponds of the Yusupov garden (now the garden of the Oktyabrsky district) were adapted for it. It was there that the first Russian athletes began to systematically engage in figure skating, who united in 1877 to form the St. Petersburg Society of Ice Skating Lovers. In 1890, the first unofficial world championship was played on the ice of the Yusupov Garden, with the participation of the strongest figure skaters from Russia, the USA, Austria, Germany, and Sweden.
