Postcard from Istanbul

By Simone Walsh

Some insights after a visit to the bustling and beautiful city of Istanbul in Turkey.

As I have an architecture fetish I have long wanted to visit Istanbul. My closest friend has now set up home there and visiting him in a place I’ve always wanted to see seemed like a great idea!

The city is much larger and busier than I had expected.

It is also seemingly more conservative than I'd anticipated in terms of how much religion seems to dominate the environment and daily life. However, I soon realised that it’s nowhere near as conservative as it might be and that while the vast majority of citizens do identify as practicing Muslims, they are mostly quite laid back about it. Although this is now changing to a degree with visible tensions in the city between average Istanbulus and the more conservative minority.

I was also struck by the intensity of commerce, which almost seems like a sport. Everywhere you walk people (men!) make a very concerted effort to sell you things you don’t want – rainbow coloured feather dusters, socks, alarm clocks, and, of course, carpets.

I was particularly taken by the laminating machines set up on little carts being wheeled all over the city with music blaring so you know where they are – I’m so often walking down the street when I get a desperate urge to have something laminated on the spot and finally I was in the right place!

And then there are the shops, which seem to either sell the most random array of products – from hairdryers to guns – or specialise to a degree which seems bizarre. I went past one tiny shop selling nothing but buttons for jeans which was filled from floor to ceiling with little boxes containing every variation of jeans button which surely exists on the entire planet. Another even tinier shop sold chocolate – floor to ceiling chocolate bars wrapped in silver foil.

The 550 year old Grand Bazaar really is the mother of all shopping malls. The most fascinating part of the complex is the oldest section in the centre where tiny shops selling antiques and other relatively precious items are found. This area is densely packed with jewellery, objects, gemstones and metalwork – from elaborate and unusual swords through to contemporary intricately woven silver worry beads – it’s full of treats for a jewellery and object maker to admire and ponder.

The architecture of the city is incredible and inspirational, as expected.

From a Roman perspective, the ancient hulk of the Hagia Sofia – the 1500 year old church which became a mosque and is now a de-consecrated museum – is astounding for its age, particularly its cavernous interior.

The dark, cool and haunting spaces of the underground Roman cisterns with their enormous and repetitious columns is a wonderful place in which to lose yourself (and pretend to be James Bond!).

And then there are the Ottoman-era mosques primarily designed by the architect Sinan. They are breathtakingly beautiful.

The interiors are wonderful spaces and the highly patterned ceilings and repeating domes and half domes soar above you in a way which is so different to and much ‘lighter’ than European cathedrals.

Most impressive of all is Suleyman Mosque, said by some to be the most beautiful building in the world - and I can't say I disagree.

Another of particular note is the tiny and peaceful Rustem Pasa, hidden above a cluster of tiny shops in an intensely busy street. The interior is covered with beautiful and heavily patterned blue Iznik tiles – I could have spent hours gazing at it all.

A trip to Istanbul wouldn’t be complete without a visit to Topkapi Palace, once home to the Ottomans for centuries.

The palace complex has large and well-maintained garden spaces – a luscious, flower-filled oasis in the middle of a very busy, over-built and polluted city. And there are no salesmen!

A visit to the Harem was mildly disappointing as we were rushed through the intimate and highly decorative spaces, plus the vast majority of the place is off limits to visitors (although, having said that, once upon a time no visitor had ever entered the Harem!).

We also saw items on display from the Ottoman’s treasury – primarily jewellery and other precious objects. Nothing I’ve seen before compares; the pieces are completely over the top with a glitz and extravagance that makes the British Crown Jewels look like a smattering of insignificant and tasteful trinkets.

There were emeralds the size of my fist, an enormous throne made of gold and studded with bezel set stones, water flasks made from gold and gemstones, one of the largest diamonds you’ll see anywhere – and much more.

A trip to the much quieter (and cheaper!) Archeological Museum would be rewarding for anyone interested in art and objects.

The museum is enormous with a very diverse array of archeological finds, from very well-preserved and presented Roman statues through to fragments of jewellery, glass and ceramics from the region dating back thousands of years. I spent hours exploring the place.

Istanbul is a city which seems to thrive on ‘busy-ness’, aesthetically, culturally and commercially. It’s well worth a visit for anyone seeking inspiration.

As a maker, what I took most from my visit is a new appreciation of dense colour and pattern, as seen in the outrageous Ottoman treasury items, but much more so in the very busy and sometimes almost random-seeming Iznik tiling covering the interiors of many buildings from the same period. I also found a contemporary and more functional echo of this use of dense pattern in some of the packed single-product shops.

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You can view more images from my visit to Istanbul in 2006 in this Flickr set, along with images of the Istanbul Box, an art object I created which was inspired by this trip.

For more insights into life in Istanbul, visit the blog of my dear friend James: I'm never coming home.

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A version of this article was first published in Filings, the quarterly newsletter of the Jewellers and Metalsmiths Group of Australia - NSW (JMGA-NSW) in August 2006.

© Simone Walsh - 2006