Not an ornament, a tool

What I love most about the Grand Bazaar (Kapalıçarşı) is this: you can turn something that passes through your mind into an object.

I say this without exaggeration — our craftsmen at the workbench bring to life things far finer than anything that crosses my mind. Once you have watched this, you never look at things the same way again.

The things I keep with me

I have a few belongings that, most of the time, I would rather not be parted from. A watch, a pen, a bookmark, prayer beads.

There are people who do this very well. And since my work is precious metals, versions of everything I have listed already exist in these metals. There are gold watches, platinum watches, fountain pens with gold nibs, gold prayer beads. There is something of everything.

But most of them stop at a certain point and can go no further. The reason is this: they were designed as ornaments.

The difference

An ornament is made to be looked at. A tool, to be used.

A gold watch is often not really a watch; it is a piece of jewellery that resembles a watch. You feel it when you pick it up — its weight is in the wrong place, its balance is set for someone else, not for you.

I want the opposite. Let it be precious, but let it be used.

The pen

I have no intention of making a watch. But a pen — in fact, only a fountain pen — is something I am thinking about.

Let the inner mechanism come from a good manufacturer; that part is a solved problem, and trying to solve it again would be futile. Let me design the outside myself: the grip, the balance, the look.

And not a single pen, but a series. Some light, some heavy. Because the pen you write with at your desk and the pen you jot a note with on your feet are not the same. I want to write that difference into the design.

The bookmark

This is what I spend the most time on. The ordinary bookmark, the one you know.

It may seem odd. The pen is more striking, the prayer beads more deeply rooted, the watch more valuable. But the bookmark is the quietest of them, and that is exactly why it interests me.

A bookmark holds your place in what you are reading. You close the book; it waits there. Then you come back.

From it, I want to make something of the kind that is handed down to the future as an heirloom.

Why I bother

The two activities I most want to be immersed in throughout my life are reading and writing.

If I adjust their tools to suit me, I think I will walk the road more willingly. Perhaps that is the whole point: making something your own is the easiest way to keep it going.