Between Two Continents: Getting Lost in the Peninsula
Besides being the oldest settlement in İstanbul, The Historic Peninsula’s many historical artefacts make the name even more fitting. Here, both below and above the soil, is filled with riches.
There have been many times that I thought I was designing and working in an open-air museum.
There are many memories from 1999, when I began to work in the area, that I thought I was in a country where I didn’t know the language.
For centuries, this area developed its traditional jewelry and metal production under the male dominant master – apprentice relationship. Master craftsmen around the Kapalıçarşı, or Grand Bazaar, who use traditional methods and depend on verbal trust, slowly began to work with other people and with women in the 2000s.
When I began to work in the area as a university educated woman and a designer, there were many long years where I felt like a fish out of water and struggled to find the right behaviour.
Jewelers and metal craftsmen in the Grand Bazaar area say that “the Bazaar is a university.”
My definition: Open Air Museum – Experience Area.
The Historic Peninsula where I produced most of my designs between 1997 and 2017, was highly stimulating to me, due to the excitement and novelty of its history and culture.
I believe working in the area contributed enormously to the development of my design language.
I continue to cooperate with the masters in the Peninsula, who had a great role in my learning about the trade and cultural dynamics of the city that I live in.
Özlem Tuna