Pj in Cappadocia
Coming from my country we tend to think if a building is Canadiancient – it is a couple of hundred years old and worth some serious consideration.
Going to Turkey and exploring places that have been around for thousands rather than hundreds of years takes some thinking about.
The first thing that strikes me is the manpower required in the construction of some of the palaces, mosques, monuments and churches.Take this obelisk in Istanbul that was made in Egypt and transported and re-erected in Istanbul over a thousand years ago. It always makes me think – how did they build a boat to accommodate the enormous size and weight not to mention how did they get it on and off the boat. To be a project manager during that long ago time can’t have been easy
One of the major reasons people visit Turkey is for carpets and other handicrafts and when I visited a carpet store/factory I got a chance to see how weavers work. The work is so finely detailed that a weaver can only work for an hour at a time before taking a break to avoid eye strain.
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About 1 hour-ish away from Istanbul in the Cappadocia Region there is a master potter and we visited his factory run by 45 members of the same family now in their 6th generation. Mr Galip’s nephew is the one in the video. Mr Galip is world-renowned not only for his pottery but for his collection of women’s hair; he has collected over a million women’s hairs and even has a special room for them. His wife though, after decades of marriage has apparently put a stop to it.
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Fortunately she didn’t put a stop to the pottery.