Learning something New

As you might know by now we are attending a course here in our town all focused on techniques with silver wire, most are only done in one region in Turkey. One of the techniques is Kazaziye and the result is pretty amazing.

Kazaziye is a local art from the northern Turkish city Trabzon. "Kazaz wire" is used to form a traditional and unique type of Turkish jewelry, the so called "Kazaziye". 

A strand of 24 K gold or 999 K silver having only 0.008 micron thickness (as fine as one strand of human hair) is wrapped over a very thin silk thread with the help of a spinning wheel (no power tools are used). 

Finished Kazaz wire can be 3-5mm thick; it is flexible, yet very strong. The matte finish of the Kazaz wire gives Kazaziye's remarkable pieces a timeless, vintage look. Simply exquisite!

The masters of the art hand-sew Kazaz wire into intricate designs including knotted beads (Turk's Head Knot), herringbone chains, Shemse Motifs (Love Knot), tassels, necklaces, pendants, earrings and rings.The exact history of Kazaz is not well-known, however, it is said that this art was born in Mesopotamia area by Lydians in 2800BC and later spread north to Anatolia. During
the Ottoman Empire, this art was more common, but today it is almost only made in Trabzon.

It is so exciting to learn something new, and is great that we can use what we learned in to our own work. Usually Kazaziye beads are used in specific ways, but we like to use them in a not traditional way to make them our own :)

I've already listed a few of these in our shop, and more are coming, and can't wait to show you more results of our very fruitful course, not to mention that our group is super fun and we have lots of laughs so it is a really nice experience.