Glass House

On a sunny day last week, I boarded the high speed ferry from Uskudar to the Golden Horn, the largest inlet off the Bosphorus.  The man in blue on this boat did not realize he would be soaked by the spray from our ferry in about 5 seconds.  And did he jump!

After passing under the second bridge over the Golden Horn, we arrived at the Fener ferry landing.

In the Ottoman period, the Golden Horn was lined on either side with boats and warehouses.  A few of what I believe are the old warehouses are still standing and are now being used for alternate purposes.  The Women's Library is housed in one quaint building, with a charter to collect works by women and about women.  The library is open to the public for research.

Camhane or "Glass House" occupies the adjacent building and it houses the studio of Istanbul glass artist Yasemin Aslan Bakiri.  Yasemin's studio is on the ground floor and the upper floors and the courtyard are used for exhibit space.

Currently, an exhibit titled "Transparency" is on display.  Yasemin's work is displayed, as well as Greek Cypriot glass artist Yorgos Papadopoulos.

Yasemin had a few life size kaftans displayed, made of cast glass pieces sewn onto a hand knitted wire mesh base.  Very striking!

My favorites were the shields Yasemin had made in the Pate de Verre technique.

These pictures are pictures of the brochure, so not as clear and exceptional as the original work.  The exhibit runs until July 31, 2011.  To see more of Yasemin's work, check out her website located at www.camhane.com

Camhane is a great re-purposed use of an historic building.

Innovative Bulgarians

In the 19th century, the Bulgarian minority of Istanbul obtained permission to establish their own orthodox church and property on the Golden Horn was donated for that purpose.  The original structure was wooden and in 1898 a new building was completed - in cast iron!  This material was used as a preferred building material, due to the ground conditions (my guess is soggy ground).  The church is called the Bulgarian St. Stephen Church or the Bulgarian Iron Church.

The bid to make the church was won by the Vienna company R Ph Waagner, who produced over 500 tons of prefabricated parts in Vienna from 1893 to 1896.  The parts were transported by ship through the Danube, Black Sea and Bosphorus to get to the Golden Horn.  Another year and a half was needed to bolt, rivet and weld the church together. 

The lower portion of the building is painted a pale battleship gray with visible rust marks, where some additional sanding and painting is needed.

Considering the material used, there is quite of bit of decorative work on the building.

The interior of the church is also made of cast iron.

St. Stephen's is one of the few remaining pre-fabricated iron churches in the world.  For more information of the history of the Bulgarian community and church, the website is www.svstefan.com   And, yes, the church is surrounded by a cast iron fence!

Pammakaristos or Fethiye Museum

Yesterday's adventure was to find the Fethiye Museum, originally one of two churches named Pammakaristos. The location required me to take a ferry down the Golden Horn to the Fener stop. The Golden Horn is one of the bays off of the Bosphorus and it is very long and skinny. This was my first time on such a fancy ferry... The inside was luxurious with monitors for live TV.

Upon arriving in Fener, the roads were cobbled and in good shape.

Old Istanbul is built on 7 hills. I climbed about 13 of them to get to the Fethiye Museum. The day was overcast and cool with fairly strong winds, so that helped quite a bit.

The original Pammakaristos church is now a mosque. But back in the 14th century, the wife of the patron who had the church built, had a second smaller funerary chapel built adjacent to the original structure. This smaller structure is now a museum and houses some of the better Byzantine mosaics in Istanbul.

The brickwork inside is as pretty as the brickwork outside.

Here is the central dome with a beautiful mosaic of Jesus and 12 old testament prophets.
Yes, I can hear Bill saying that he wished I had a better camera... I will go back and try to take better pictures.

Inside, there is also a fresco of the three wise men.

I had the place to myself, except for the two attendants who took my $3 admission outside and one attendant inside who tracked me. I think I drove him crazy, as I kept going back and forth between the sign noting the mosaics, frescoes, markings, etc. and the actual item. He got his workout following me around.

There were no candles lit in the church, but as you can see, they are prepared in the event of a fire, albeit a very small contained one.

After my visit, I walked down the hill and walked along the Golden Horn to the Kadir Has University. They have a small museum down one level from the street entrance to the building. They have excavated some of the old brick walls below this part of the city and house their archaeological collections around the walls. It was a very impressive display, of which they allow no photos..., so we end on the fire remediation system.