Osman Gilan is busy battling bureaucracy in a bid to establish a museum for the ancient art of tile-making in Istanbul – home of a culture with a long history of using tiles in architecture. “And there is a lot of bureaucracy to get through,” he says. “So it could be a long while before we see results. It’s not a short-term mission. But the fact is that you can’t rely on the authorities to protect this kind of heritage and as an active citizen you have to act and create an example.”
As, indeed, Gilan has done: back in 1999 his company was asked – given the honour – to sponsor the renovation of the Treasury Hall in the Topkapi Palace. So Gilan must be some kind of Turkish preservation organisation or cultural fund, right? Wrong. Gilan makes jewellery.
But not just any jewellery. For a start, each piece is a one-off, which has swayed the likes of Nicole Kidman and Penelope Cruz to wear them on the red carpet. Each piece is priced at anywhere between US$25,000 and $2 million (Dh91,830 to Dh7.35m). “And, more than ever, there is a market at those prices,” says Gilan, the vice- president of the family business established in 1980 by his father and uncle, Muharrem and Ferhan Gilan.
“Increasingly, it is the one-of-a-kind that wealthy people demand, because that to them is what true luxury is about. In fact, some pieces are only ever seen by the craftspeople and the client.”
And, what is more, each piece is inspired by the romantic myths and legends of the Ottoman Empire, both directly – a piece might feature fantastical birds from some old tale or the çintemani symbol – and indirectly, providing a general line for a collection; pieces for 2014 will be broadly themed around the history of the Great Palace of Constantinople. These stories are often little known outside of tight scholarly circles – Gilan digs deep to uncover them. “And even if our jewellery is one way to transmit those stories, it’s because they are our source material and that we feel a need to protect Turkish culture for the coming generations,” says Gilan.
That protection also informs the jewellery. Gilan is the great-great-great-great grandson of one of the seamstresses to the Ottoman pashas and aims to preserve the craft she may have recognised. Gilan’s signature, for example, is the so-called mystery or palace setting, in which a rose-cut diamond is held in place without covering its underside to allow the passage of light through the stone. It’s a technique revived from the 15th century, and mastered only by a handful of Gilan craftsmen, each of whom – necessarily, since so many are approaching retirement – has an eager apprentice.
“If we don’t use those kinds of techniques they will be forgotten again,” Gilan suggests of Turkey’s largely unsung 600-year-old jewellery- making culture. “You find them through intensive research, but they’re only going to get harder to find. The Ottoman emperors loved jewellery and invited craftsmen from all over the world to work here and develop their techniques. Some of the rarest jewels in the world are in Istanbul.”
And some of them are in Gilan pieces. Indeed, Gilan has a secondary mission, too. If, as Gilan notes, most of the world-famous jewellery brands – from Cartier to Tiffany to Harry Winston – are French, British or American, Gilan aims to be the first out of the East to make it in the West (indeed, it already has a store in New York and sells through the Ritz Paris).
“Look at the history of luxury goods and it starts in the East,” says Gilan. “We’re going back to that. Not only are its powerful cultures, from Egypt to Persia to Japan, increasingly inspirational, but I think we can expect more of its products to have a presence in the international luxury market.
“We live in a world in which it is much easier to make connections and where better than in Istanbul, where East meets West? It will be a case of western modernity meets eastern sophistication.”
artslife@thenational.ae
