Fused Glass

Train and metro stations often have some beautiful murals on their walls. Most often, they are of ceramic tiles. But, in the Taxim station, where the funicular from Kabatas arrives, there is a great mural in fused glass. The scene is of the Bosphorus. A closeup of some houses, a ferry boat and a mosque...

The fused glass artist is Ebru Susamcioglu and she did the work at The Glass Furnace in Istanbul. "Cam" is the Turkish word for glass. The red motif for CAM is very clever.

The Glass Furnace has a website located at http://glassfurnace.org They have classes in various glass working methods on their campus, out from the city in the district of Beykoz.

A Day in Kuzguncuk

My goal for an excursion to Kuzguncuk, was to find the quilt shop of Istanbul and to see this village on the Bosphorus. As it was a hot day, I called for a taxi and asked the driver to take me to the Kuzguncuk ferry terminal, as the ferry terminals are always in the heart of the village. The driver asked if he could drop me off at the small park with an opening to the Bosphorus. Lovely! It was later I realized why he questioned my request to be taken to the ferry terminal. It seems to be closed for renovation!

Kuzguncuk's main street goes inland from the Bosphorus and has beautiful old trees. It is very unusual to see a shady street with such nice trees. Other streets have no trees or very small trees and limited shade.

Just off the main drag, is the street that houses the quilt shop. The shop is owned by Selma Kenter and she also started a quilting organization. Every few years, the members of the quilting organization hold an exhibit of their quilts. I missed the most recent exhibit in May of this year.

Inside is a display of the quilt exhibit posters from previous years. In addition, catalogs of the quilts exhibited are produced. This year's catalog is not yet available, but I did pick up a copy of the 2000 exhibit catalog. I will pass this along to Louise if anyone wants to take a look at it.

Above the shop is a large workroom, for classes, which will start in September. Here is the link to the website for the quilting organization http://tsdpatchwork.org/

My map of Kuzguncuk showed three churches in a small area. I found 2 of them. Both were locked up tight, but in good repair, so probably still in use.

A large green patch on the map noted a minority cemetery. The cemetery is fenced in and I climbed a steep hill and found a doorway into a small part of the cemetery. There was a cross on the entrance, so the minorities would be Christians. Most of the cemetery appears jungle like in vegetation.

The cemetery is still being used. There were several burials marked from the last decade. Most burial sites had simple crosses, but some had detailed stone carvings.

On my way back down the hill, I walked past an old building with very weathered wood. Traditional building material for the homes along the Bosphorus is wood.

Have a good day where ever you might be!

Amy

Turkish Tea

Turkey is one of the largest tea drinking countries in the world. Tea is offered at restaurants and cafes and is also made in the home. Traditionally, it is served in small glasses with a saucer and sugar on the side. Never is milk or lemon used in tea. A glass of tea is often just 50 cents. This one had a view of the Bosphorus, right by the ferry terminal, so it cost $2.The process of making Turkish tea is an art I have yet to acquire. It takes about a half an hour and a double boiler type tea pot is needed. Initially, you boil water in the bottom kettle and just have the loose tea leaves in the top kettle. After the water boils, some water from the bottom kettle is poured into the top kettle to wet the tea leaves. Then the steeping process starts. More boiling water is added to the top as needed. After 30 minutes, you have some very strong (and I find bitter) tea in the top kettle. The server then pours tea from the top kettle into a glass and adds water from the bottom kettle to get the right color and strength. In the food stores, there are many brands of tea and the most popular packaging is the one kilo (2.2045 pounds) size. That's a lot of tea! And a great bargain...prices for a kilo of tea range from $6 to $8. Tea is grown in the north of Turkey, near the Black Sea.

So when two workers arrived at my apartment with our two night tables each in a box containing 17 convenient pieces, I felt I needed to offer drinks. Coffee, tea or water? One chose water and the other tea. I turned on the electric kettle, boiled up some water and poured it over a Dilmah Ceylon Supreme Tea bag, imported in one of my three suitcases and purchased at the Giant in Nazareth, PA. Well, what could the worker expect from a foreigner? As it turns out, he thought it was an excellent cup of tea and inquired as to the type of tea. Maybe he does not care for the traditional tea's bitterness either. Or maybe it was the packet of Equal I gave him that made it special, as I did not have any sugar in the house.

Enjoy your next cup of tea!

Amy

Laundry Day

While walking in the Fener area, it was evident that it was laundry day... And nice to see such teamwork with the neighbors across the street!

Rest assured, my laundry is being dried in the dryer, so my underwear is not flying around Istanbul...

Amy

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.

Breakfast by Kucuksu

Just about directly to the Bosphorus from my apartment, is our local palace, Kucuksu. The direct translation of the name is "small water". This is a lovely little palace that is now open as a museum. It was originally used as a hunting lodge, when hunts took place in the forested hills behind the palace. The palace sits right on the Bosphorus, so it was easy to get to, from the larger palaces on the European side. Visitors cannot take pictures inside the palace, so you will miss seeing the rooms - 4 on each floor, decorated with sitting room furniture. All the rooms are sitting rooms - no bedrooms. They did not stay overnight here during the hunts.

One pier adjacent to Kucuksu is not open for human traffic,

but another is, and that is where I attempted to have lunch. It was 11:30 a.m. and lots of people were eating. Well, they were only serving breadkast and when I asked for a menu, they said they had no menu. That is typical. Breakfast would always be standard fare made with bread, cheese and olives. So I ordered feta cheese tost. Tost is like grilled cheese, without the butter. And I ordered cherry juice and olives.

I was too late to get a peach colored tablecloth, but I did get peach juice instead of cherry, kashir cheese tost instead of feta, feta cheese on the side, and of course, breakfast olives.

Afiyet olsun!
Amy

Chocolate

Chocolate is a world favorite, and in Istanbul, there is no exception to that statement. In shopping malls, and larger stores, chocolate fountains are there for the chocoholics. You can get a cup of fruit topped with the chocolate sauce that is running from this fountain. choc'nette is the name of the most popular chocolate fountain business. This one has both regular and white chocolate fountains. I have not tried this yet. It looks a bit too decadent.

I visited some art galleries this week. The Yapi Kredi bank has an art gallery featuring an exhibition of Italian and Turkish artists. An Italian artist by the name of Aldo Mondino, created a Byzantine style mosaic of chocolates wrapped in foils. The piece measures 190 cm by 240 cm, so it is not small. The following picture shows a closeup of one of the arched windows.

The chocolate company of long standing in Turkey is named Mabel, and they are still in business. The company started in 1947 and you can look at their wares on their website.

http://www.mabel.com.tr

Hope your day includes a little chocolate!

Amy

Anatolian Weights and Measures - Pera Museum

The Pera Museum in Istanbul has an extraordinary collection of Anatolian Weights and Measures, of which just a few samples are shown here. One of the oldest pieces in the collection is a weight in the form of a sleeping duck from the Neo Assyrian period, 7th century B.C. and made of basalt. Later, in the Babylonian Period, 2nd millenium B.C., weights in a similar form of sleeping ducks are made of bronze.

My favorite weights were made of glass of various colors in the Byzantine Period, 6th-7th century A.D.

The glass weights were evidently the favorite of someone in the later Ottoman Period, as a bracelet was made of these early Islamic glass weights.

In the Roman Period, it was popular to make the Steelyard weights to represent important figures. Here is Hercules, made of bronze-lead.

And here are two empresses and a third fellow, whose details I did not capture. They are made of bronze-lead from the 5th - 6th century A.D.

Spherical weights with ring handles were made during the Ottoman Period, 19th - 20th century, of iron.

And finally, ring shaped weights were made during the Ottoman Period, 1876 - 1910, of brass. These were made at Tophane in Istanbul and were made according to the metric system.