Glass Art

Glass is believed to have been discovered coincidentally. The most popular story about the discovery of glass is the story told by the Greek historian Piny. According to Piny, some tradesmen set up a camp after having disembarked from their ships and lid a fire in the river bed. The next day, they found transparent and shiny glass particles among the ashes of the fire they lid the previous day. In the early periods, glass art was mostly developed in Egypt and Mesopotamia. It is thought that glass ovens existed in this region where people used woods to light these ovens.    

Today in Turkey, certain glass pieces from the Seljuk and Artuqid periods take place in the museum collections. These pieces are completely hand-made and are products from architectural decorations.

During the Ottoman period, glass art developed significantly, as can be seen from the pieces of this era. Particularly after the conquest of Istanbul, glass industry significantly improved in the city. The traditional glass industry produced its most popular examples during the 17^th and 18^th centuries, although very few documents reached today. We know that there was a glass production centre located in Istanbul Egrikapi, between the Tekfur Palace and Egrikapi. A miniature made in honour of Murat the 3^{rd demonstrates} certain important documents related to the period. Sources indicate that there were certain workshops producing different types of glass in Egrikapi, Eyup, Balat, Ayvansaray, Bakirkoy, Beykoz, Pasabahce, Cubuklu and İncirkoy districts of the capital city of the period, Istanbul. In this period, glass was imported from Venice and Bohemia.     

In addition, it is also known that glass masters were brought from France in the period of Mahmud the 1^st and that a Whirling Dervish called Mehmet Dede was sent to Italy in order to master glass production techniques in the period of Selim the 3^rd. As said, the Whirling Dervish founded a workshop in Beykoz, Istanbul and produced many works, among which the most popular one is Cesmi-i Bulbul.

With the foundation of the republic, glass industry in Turkey acquired a new direction and Paşabahçe which was founded in February 17, 1934 has become an important glass production centre for Turkish glass history. Among the most popular glass masters of this period is (baba) Yusuf Gormus, who was famous with his freestyle products.

The traditional Turkish glass work Cesmi-i Bulbul or the Venice style Turkish filigrano is also known as the Beykoz work. Similar products of high quality are still being produced in Venice, Murano. Apart from the traditional Çeşm-i Bülbül, it is observed that the Turkish glass art adopted forms and styles conformable to the applied and decorative products and that many forms acquired particularly from ceramics predominated.  

Our glassblowing artists are Halil İbrahim Mert, Serap Başol, Yasemin Aslan Bakiri, Berna Terziahmetoğlu'dur.