Baltalimani Japanese Garden

Baltalimani is a Bosphorus village of Istanbul on the European side, between Emirgan and Rumeli Hisari.  It is home to a Japanese garden. 

Shimonoseki, Japan is a sister city of Istanbul, as it also sits on a strait and has a similar look.  In November 2003,  the Japanese garden was established in honor of thirty years of friendship as a sister city.  The plants and decorative items in the garden were gifts from Shimonoseki.  This is the Kamon Strait in Shomonoseki and with a quick look, one might easily confuse it with the Bosphorus strait in Istanbul.

The grounds are laid out with Japanese ornaments, walking paths, ...

 

a pond, large rocks, ...

a little house,

and some Japanese carp flags.

I have visited a few times.  It is a pleasant quiet spot in a noisy city.  The cherry blossoms were the best in the city in May, ...

and the Japanese maples were striking also.

A lovely spot for a city respite.

graffiti

Considering the amount of plain concrete walls in Istanbul, there is very little graffiti or street art.  But there was a visiting German graffiti artist, known as "Kripoe" who has left his mark of yellow left handed fists around town, including in Tunel, ...

under the Galata Bridge, ...

and my favorite, the winged fist in Beyazit.  All locations are in hard to reach places, so one wonders how he was able to get to the spot to create his art.

I do not know the creators of the other work I have spotted, but here is a sampling, from Baltilimani, ...

from Anadolu Hisari, ...

from Tophane, ...

and a good number of pieces from Kadikoy.   "Fires" is stenciled under the image.

Some distinguished characters, ...

a dog flying upside down????, ...

and a stencil couple!

In my own district of Beykoz, countless cement trucks are hauling their raw material up this road and later barreling down the road in convoys to fetch more of their building powder.  Somewhere new canvasses are being built for the blossoming careers of Istanbul's grafitti artists. 

Sakip Sabanci Museum

The Sabanci family is a well established industrial family in many business sectors in Turkey.  There is also a university and a museum in Emirgan, on the Bosphorus.

The museum is housed in what was once a family home, called the horse house, due to the horse statues at the Bosphorus level and also the higher house level.

The museum has an exhibit titled "Across - The Cyclades and Western Anatolia during the 3rd Millenium BC".  The Cyclades are Greek islands between modern day Turkey and Greece, which have been inhabited and have traded with coastal Anatolia (the Asian side of Turkey) for milleniums.   The large sign out front depicts one of the artifacts on loan from a Greek museum. 

There are also artifacts from several Turkish museums, all of which date to the time period 3000 BC to 2000 BC.

A map in the gift shop shows the islands.  Although unreadable in my picture, each of the white words represent an inhabited location during that time period.  A wooden boat was used by these peoples to row between the islands and the coasts of the adjacent mainlands.

The museum does not allow photography, but they do have school groups, who tour the exhibits and then work on creating their own artifact out of white clay.  Without needing to dry, the students were able to use markers to color their artwork.  When I asked in English, if I could take a picture, the heads nodded "yes" and the mouths sent the message of "yabanci"  or foreigner down the row.

The Sakip Sabanci museum is on a beautiful piece of property with views of the Bosphorus, and ...

beautiful gardens, ...

with artifacts displayed throughout.  And just when you think you might want to stretch out on the grass, ...

that spot is taken by another lovely artifact.

A stop by the waterfall and water lily pond, ...

to say goodbye to the resident frog.

More information about the museum is available at www.muze.sabanciuniv.edu   The current exhibit is on display until August 28, 2011. 

Turkish Towels - hand loomed!

Canadian Jennifer Gaudet is doing her best to foster the traditional hand loomed Turkish towel.   She works with the remaining families doing this beautiful hand work and has a shop in the Sultanahmet section of Istanbul with their results.  The shop can be found in the Arasta Bazaar - look for the Canadian flag in the window.   The Arasta Bazaar is by the Mosaic Museum.

The shop's name is "Jennifer's Hamam" - the haman being the traditional Turkish bath.  The towels are both the looped towels, ...

as well as the flat weave towels called pestamel.  All towels are made of organic fibers and processed using organic materials and methods to get to the finished product.

A visit to Jennifer's Hamam is an educational, as well as a shopping experience, supporting the few families with the knowledge and skills to make these lovely hand loomed pieces.

www.jennifershamam.com has more information and pictures of the towels, the looms and the processes. 

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!