A table lamp named “Alma”. It was inspired from the local gourd lamps of Gümüşlük, Türkiye. Gümüşlük is on the Aegean coast, it’s a village of Bodrum. My friend’s father had a restaurant / house there, we used to go couple of times every year generally during fall and winter. A small summer village, calm, with beautiful sea, his place was called ‘Alma’. The lamp is a wink to a night we had there lying on the floor, watching the sky at night, listening to music. It was handmade in two editions of 50, in 2019 and 2021. Cast-iron stand, slip-cast parian porcelain shade. One of the ideas was; sustainability in making something with love and longevity, so people can’t throw it away. Parts were produced small batches in Türkiye, England, Spain and Italy.
Crib for Toros, a
baby-boat, baby-bed, sculpture, product, a gift for the baby my brother was about to have.
Because this way a crib doesn’t get thrown in an attic after couple of months, and can become something more, a vessel, the first experience of the sea, maybe a place to put toys, play in, put books, and clothes, maybe it goes into the kitchen or the garden later, maybe flowers can be grown in it, maybe you can give it to your child when you have it. I made one for me and it was in my kitchen, I used to put the fruits and veggies in it. Two versions made in 2021. Panels of okoume plywood were hand cut for the first and CNC’d for the second, they were then laminated and hand carved.
My grandparents own a summer house in the north of Cyprus in Esentepe, 500m to the mediterranean sea, it is visible from every room. I used to swim in it’s pool when I was a kid. My grandfather stayed there through his recovery after his heart surgery, we would meet there as the entire family. All my family moved far away, and the house was left to rot. It hasn’t been used in 10 years. When I returned Cyprus for a long break, I reformed the house, including interiors/exteriors, infrastructure & the pool. Broke some walls, built some new ones, constructed a pretty garage that housed the services and gardening tools. Found, bought, built and designed furniture, did a lot of landscaping and fixed things over 6 months. It was an Airbnb for the first summer, now a super nice couple lives there.
Restoring, painting, building, making, repainting, looking at every second hand furniture shop in Kadıköy, haggling, drinking a lot of turkish tea & rakı, becoming bffs with the antique dealers, everyday for 4 months, making the perfect Istanbul Airbnb. Changed places of the rooms, broke the notion of dedicated rooms, the kitchen was not a kitchen but a place to cook,
the dishes were done in another room where also laundry was done, the living room became a room to live, it had a bed in the middle of it at some point, which meant also a place to sleep & have sex. It had things I collected, my piano, and a swing. Started operating in 2020, ran for four years and hosted many great people & events. It was the fourth floor of the historic Italian building named Taranto, in the centre of Moda, Kadıköy, İstanbul.
A 3 month long journey of self-exploration. Canvas as a notepad, verbal then visual, sensual through the months of July to September of 2021.
The best candles ever. In 2021 I moved to the house of a friend in a little village in the Catalan countryside for a couple of months. My friend kept bees as a hobby, and had some beeswax lying around. One day we were walking and passed a ravine nearby the house, it was full of canes. As we were talking we thought maybe we could use the canes as molds for candles. They are the best candles ever, because everything came from a 500 meter radius, the bees help the flowers and don’t need the wax, cane’s grow rapidly on their own, we only used a blunt knife to split the canes, some olive oil as release agent. Everything local, everything natural, plus beeswax is the brightest and healthiest fuel source for candles. Good function, good to nature, good for us, beautiful, good story, and good product. The best candles ever.
A video introducing the box for Alma made in 2021. The previous box was made using minimal amount of recycled cardboard, the idea was it should dissapear. This one was the other aproach;
That it should last forever and be reutilised as somehthing else. Mild steel sheets, they rust when left.
Featuring Ra Enrich, in my studio in Igualada.